If you’re camping with your car, an awning is one of the best things you can set up on the roof. It’s a great way to give yourself a shaded outdoor space you can use to chill and hang out with your group. The Kammok Crosswing Car Awning performs the same function as similar products, albeit with a design that allows for lightning-fast setup.
Billed as “the fastest deploying car awning,” the roof-mounted accessory can be unfolded and pitched by a single person in just three seconds. Seriously. And you don’t even need two hands to do it, allowing you to keep one hand on the drink you’re finishing while the other puts the shade in place.
The Kammok Crosswing Car Awning enables the fast deployment by eliminating the need to set up poles and run guy lines. Instead, you simply pull it out of its housing with one or two hands until you’ve got the shade cover you want, with a built-in rigid structure keeping it in the desired position. According to the outfit, it can be deployed and locked at three depths, too, namely 3.0 feet, 4.9 feet, or 6.5 feet, so you can deploy it short if you’re just waiting for some store clerks to load up furniture in the back of your car and pull it in full while car camping in the backcountry.
It uses a unique x-shaped frame that deploys as you pull the awning fabric and uses the housing to anchor the whole thing, with a latch on the side of the housing letting you lock it in place once you have it at the preferred shade coverage. Not only does the unique design allow for easy setup, it lets you set up a comfy shade without poles and lines that can both get in the way and even end up tripping people on occasion.
The Kammok Crosswing Car Awning comes in two width sizes: 5.0 feet and 7.0 feet, with both extending to a maximum of 6.5 feet in depth. Granted, it’s not as big as some of the car awnings we’ve seen, but for the convenience of not having to set up poles and lines, it’s a whole lot of car awning for very little work. Naturally, it’s designed to perform well outdoors, with the VeloX 600D PVC-coated polyester fabric allowing it to shrug off sun and rain alike, all while tolerating wind gusts of 25 mph, so it can do decent on windy campsites, too.
It comes with two Talon Mounts that, the outfit claims, should allow it to work with a variety of crossbars and roof rack systems, including those from Yakima, Thule, Rhino, and Prinsu. Basically, if your car is equipped for carrying cargo on the roof, there’s a good chance it should mount on there, too. Since it mounts on the roof, there’s no need to haul anything inside the car, either, leaving more space in the boot for any cargo you want to bring along.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the Kammok Crosswing. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at $599.