ProView – Thule Force 3 XXL Review

As someone who lived out of an old Subaru Outback for a couple of years, I know the importance of gear storage in a vehicle. I have now graduated to less transient living conditions, but fitting gear in my car for the weekend adventures is still a priority. I was super excited to swap my old, beat-to-death top box out for the new Thule Force 3. After a decade wrestling old hinges and a sticky lock, this new box was a night-and-day difference that will last me the next few decades of adventure.

Attachment & Fit

My latest adventure rig is an old clunky Japanese van with a lot of odd features. Chief among them is a right hand drive, and a single sliding van door on the left hand side of the car. Now normally if your van has only one sliding door, it opens on the right side of the vehicle, meaning most rooftop boxes for cars open to the right to accommodate this aspect.

With my strange car, my old rooftop box left me climbing up on a car tire and sometimes even stacking rocks up just to reach the latch high up on my van. With the new Thule Force 3, the clever hinge system allows for opening on either side of the box with no adjustment, meaning I can finally use the left side of my car to access the box.

Now this might not affect everyone, but it can really help if you need to fit other things on your roof such as kayaks, fishing pole holders, or bike racks. The flexibility of opening on either side is amazing to have, and it takes zero effort to utilize, just put your key in the other latch and let the DualSide hinge system do the work.

Attaching the box to the car couldn’t have been easier. I hate to bash on my trusty old box, since it was made 15 years ago, but the attachment to my bars doesn’t even hold a candle. My old system involved unscrewing multiple bolts, reaching under and deep inside the box, and getting covered in road dust the whole time.

The Thule system was so simple I thought I was doing something wrong! You drop some pincer clamps down through the floor of the box into some position adjustment rails, line the thing up where you want it, and simply clamp down the arms on whatever bars you have. The whole process took about two minutes, and I specifically liked that the sliding rails allow for a broad range of widths between mounting bars, since my old ones are missing their key and functionally fused in place. The position adjustment also meant that the box sits well clear of my trunk when it opens all the way, avoiding further scuffs to my rear window.

Lock & Latch

The door latch is another great feature of this box that was well thought out by the designers. The latch was specially designed to keep snow and ice from fouling up the mechanism and preventing you from getting into your gear.

With a few late winter storms in Salt Lake I was able to confirm it worked great, at least in mild Rockies winter conditions. It also closes incredibly smoothly and leaves little question as to whether or not it’s locked. I love the little red indicator in the latch and the resounding clunk when it re-locks, as it means I no longer am frustratingly guessing as to when I can turn my key to remove it, or straining upwards on a deceivingly locked system.

Added Storage

For its functional purpose, the Force 3 does a great job of adding space to my car. I no longer have to throw dripping skis in the back of my car, or have passengers sitting with bags of climbing gear on their laps.

With the size XXL, I really don’t have to worry about fitting things up there. My van seats seven people, and if the engine would happily carry that number of people up a mountain pass, I would have no problem fitting seven pairs of skis and poles up in the box with little issue. The spacious design even comes with some cam-straps to throw in there if you have items you don’t want rolling around, or maybe something bulky that could use some compression.

A low bottom wall of the box means I can easily reach the gear in it without having to bend my elbow down into it like some poor toddler digging for cookies at the bottom of a jar. 

Gas Mileage

To all the data driven nerds out there one of the most important things regarding a new top-box on their car is how it will affect their gas mileage. Going from my old box to my new one, I actually calculated an increase in my MPG of about two extra miles per gallon.

Now, I will do some critical analysis of this data because I don’t think it is entirely accurate. The first and main reason I suspect this is that my van is a two-tonne diesel brute, meaning once it gets going, any drag produced by a plastic box on top would have little effect on the forward progress of this monster.

The additional MPG I recorded during my trial of this box could be due to my data with the old box being years old (I record an MPG for every tank of gas), and the data with the new box being limited to only a month or so.

Alternatively, the difference could be caused by some tweaks to my overdrive made for some long trips that I was taking this new box on. Whatever the reason, the data would at least imply that this new box has a better aerodynamic factor than my old one, and I had a couple thousand miles of highway to prove it.

The Final Thoughts

The new Thule Force 3 is a great way to bump up the storage of your vehicle to crazy levels, with ease of use and little effect on how your car drives. In my time with it, I have noticed no extra noise to my car (it’s very loud inside already) but significantly less gear cramping my space. At one point I had five pairs of skis and poles, three pairs of boots, and two large backpacks up in the box without even pushing the limits of what it could hold.

If you can picture all of that crammed elsewhere in your car you know that having a box on top means taking extra friends, having longer adventures, and being more comfortable on tiring drives. 

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