Arrives before Christmas 
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Unlike other hanging bike racks, this rack swings away from the rear of your vehicle. This gives you full access to your cargo area without having to remove your bikes. Anti-sway cradles fold up, so they don't interfere while loading your bikes.
Features:
Specs:
Note: The distance from the center of the hitch pin hole to the face of the hitch must be 1-1/2" or greater to use this rack.
Swing-Away Design for Rear Cargo Area Access
The Thule Apex XT has a hinged arm that lets you swing the rack away from your vehicle. This provides full access to your vehicle's rear cargo area and eliminates the need to remove your bikes when you're unloading your vehicle or letting your dog hop in or out of the back.
To open the hinged arm, simply loosen the hand knob, pull up the T-handle, and swing the rack away from the rear of the vehicle.
To close the rack, push down on the inner spring lever and swing the arm back into position. The T-handle will drop into place when the rack is fully closed. Finally, tighten the hand knob to completely secure the rack.
Dual Folding Arms with Anti-Sway Cradles
The Apex Swing XT has dual arms that provide excellent support for your bikes. They slope up to provide ground clearance for steep driveways and bumpy roads.
To fold the arms down, pull up the HitchSwitch lever at the top of the mast. This leaves a smaller footprint, so you can keep the rack on your vehicle to park in your garage. And when stored in this configuration, it doesn't take up as much space in your garage.
HideAway anti-sway cradles with rubber straps hold your bikes firmly in place. Each set of cradles has two straps that secure your bike along the top tube and one that secures the seat post or downtube. This multi-point contact helps keep your bikes from rocking back and forth, reducing bike-to-bike contact. The soft rubber cradles rotate around the rack's arms to accommodate bikes of different styles and shapes.
The cradles have grooves on the surface that prevent your brake and shifter cables from getting pinched.
Ratchet straps hold your bikes firmly in place on the cradles. You can remove the lower straps and fold the cradles up against the arms to make it easier to slide your bikes onto the rack.
The rack quickly installs in your hitch receiver, without the need for tools. Just slide the shank into your hitch and turn the knob until snug. Turning the knob deploys an anti-rattle wedge in the shank to help take play out of the hitch connection. It also sets the integrated SnugTite hitch pin into place, securing the rack to your receiver.
The lock on the hand knob secures the rack to your vehicle. Once locked, the hand knob will spin freely so a would-be thief can't operate it.
The integrated cable lock threads around your bikes' frames and inserts into the lock at the end of the left arm. The cable stores inside the mast when not in use. The locks are keyed alike, so you only need to use 1 key. Additional One-Key System locks (sold separately) let you make all your Thule products keyed alike.
Available Adapter Bar
If you have a women's bike, kid's bike, or any other bike without a straight, horizontal top tube, you will need an adapter bar (sold separately) to properly mount your bike. The bar fits between the seat post and handlebar stem post of your bike to create a top tube so your bike hangs level on the rack.
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (200 Customer Reviews)
Unlike other hanging bike racks, this rack swings away from the rear of your vehicle. This gives you full access to your cargo area without having to remove your bikes. Anti-sway cradles fold up, so they don't interfere while loading your bikes.
This rack is working great. I love the swing away arm. Makes very easy to get luggage in and out or more often the dogs in and out the back of my SUV when on the road.
Received the product in good condition and install was quite straightforward. The rack is solid and the fact that all critical points allow for adjustment and tightening via knob vs needing tools is indeed a plus. It fits snugly in my receiver and tightens down for zero movement on our Subaru Ascent. I’ve yet to load bikes but I can already tell its much better than our previous Saris rack.
There was only one install issue - make certain you place the right locking mechanism into the proper lock. I don’t know why but it uses two separate keys - and the single key lock is the one that goes into the hitch receiver knob - and the instructions were slightly ambiguous on cautioning for that.
Overall it’s heavy duty and should last year’s.
Excellent swing rack! I can open both rear doors of my 2019 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500. I couldn’t be happier.
It came dirt/dusty all over the parts. When I pay for a new product, I kind of expect it to be clean. But no big deal. It works great and seems very sturdy. Most of all, I love the swing-away function.
Happy to find it in stock. It took a couple of hours to assemble both the rack and the tram. Looking forward to many years of use!
This by far the strongest bike rack I've ever used. Its heavy mind you and can be a little tough to attach and detach, but that being said is easy to lock into the hitch and tighten, reverse also an easy process. I love the ability to swing the arm and gain full access to the hatch on my Highlander and then simply swing it back in place, even with 4 bikes attached, this alone makes this rack well worth the money.
Jason
7/12/2022
One year in and this has been a great investment for us. The rack remains in great shape despite heavy use and now when I see other similar racks out there I always compare them and there is no comparison to this Thule rack, very happy we bought this and well worth it.
It’s nice and sturdy rack that is great for jeeps or trucks to be able to maintain full use of the tailgate. What I dislike is that it cannot possibly hold 4 bikes. My wife and I both have gravel bikes with drop down handlebars. And this rack can only accommodate those two bikes plus our 5 year olds small bike with 18” wheels. There’s no way we can even fit 3 adult sized bikes. So that’s very disappointing for the price. I don’t know why they couldn’t have made the horizontal bars that the bikes rest on longer so there would be enough room for 4 bikes.
Katrina B.
8/16/2022
When mounting the bikes to the rack, you will need to make sure that the bikes are facing in the opposite directions. For example, you would have the first bike handlebars facing the drivers side, while having the second bikes handlebars facing the passenger side. Then for the pedals, you will want to make sure that they are on opposite sides of each other as well. Four bikes will be snug on the rack, but they will fit on this rack.
It is heavy, but if you want all of the options that this provides (4 bikes, swing away rack) it's great.
Saumil
2/27/2023
Still love it.
Purchased this so we could access rear of our minivan with bikes on the rack. The bar is very hard to swing open and get closed and turning the bolt to secure the swing arm is very difficult given the space between the bumper of the car and hitch. The plastic casing around the hitch broke on day one.
The rack is pretty inconvenient when it comes to loading our families bikes. There’s lots of negotiating around how to put them on as we have adapters for kids bikes and it’s just an all around pain. Plus my husbands bike and mine don’t like being near either and it a real hassle getting them on! Also the screw to lock the rack in place has now been stripped so we can’t take the rack off till the end of bike season. It’s not the best product, but it at least gets us from home to the local trails.
Very happy with this bike rack. We've put well over 1,000 miles on so far with three full sized bikes on the rack and no issues. Really appreciate that all the installation and adjustments are tool free, making this very user friendly to install and use. My only concern is around the long term durability of the straps to hold the bikes. They do not feel as robust as the rubber straps on my old Thule rack that has lasted me now over 15 years. Only time will tell long term if these straps will be as durable. Everything else seems quite solid and robust.
I just love my Thule Swing Apex rack. Was able to install it in 10 minutes. It fully swings out more than far enough to
accommodate my Ford F-150 tailgate which was my main reason for purchasing. Great product!
As for etrailer.com, they were simply wonderful to deal with. The first rack I ordered was not able to be delivered quick enough so they gave me a nicer rack for the same price. Then they shipped it out within a couple of days. Great service!
Amazing service and guidance... this works amazing for a large SUV and a family of 4. The swing out function is genius because u can still open and close back of suv.
Great purchase
I ordered this carrier during the pandemic - so it was a hot item and it took a while to get it - but it was worth it. It connected easily and carried the 4 bikes (2 adult, 2 kids) really well. I haven't gone on any really long road trips with it yet - but from the performance thus far would recommend this product.
Regardless of received the wrong item at first time. I notified etrailer and they sent the free return label for returning the wrong item and they shipped the correct item the next day. For a quick response and for this reason I gave it a 4 1/2 stars for customer services. I would recommended etrailer and I would shop at etrailer again in the future.
Thank you for taking care of this matter so quickly.
Excellent design and robust construction. Assembly took about 30 minutes, perfect fit on my Grand Cherokee. Put a bike on, actuated the swing and drove around a bit, no vibration, no interference with backup camera. First impressions very positive and I'm very pleased I chose this brand and model.
The hitch did not fit tight the way it should because the bolt holes did not match up. Clearly a defect. Was so heavy that it remains a piece of trash that is unusable in my basement.
Sierra K.
7/22/2022
This bike rack has two different holes to accommodate different bumpers. You can choose which length you want and then add item # e98942, so next time you go to put it on, it will stop where you want it without trying to fumble around to find the correct spot.
Helpful Links
Fantastic product! Instruction manual could be more descriptive.
Bike rake is easy to use and perfect for 4 bikes
Great Product and great service!!
Hard to manipulate with 4 bikes on,but otherwise worked well on 800 mile trip. Very sturdy.
Assembled the rack today. I haven't used it for any trips yet. It is very difficult to get the two major pieces to align so the bolt can be installed. I was finally able to get it to work.
Easy, good pricing, had a professional install it.
Easy assembly. Solid product. You get what you pay for. Easy operation. Great seller, fast shipping.
great product
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Condition: Like New
Notes: May have damaged packaging or minor cosmetic blemishes.
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Francis
7/26/2021
Still working well!