Originally Posted by gnat

Not a question since I know the official answer, but rather than continuing one of the muddied threads I figured I'd start a new one that can stay clean.

I want this thread to hopefully answer the question once and for all. As such please do not reply here unless you have information that moves the investigation along.

What we know is that Porsche's official response is that roof rails can not be installed if they weren't ordered as part of the build. There are places selling "retrofit" kits, but they are for decoration only and should not be used to carry weight (the better sellers make this clear). If you don't have roof rails from the factory at this time your only safe option is use a "gutter" mount system from someone like Thule or Yakima. Note that the factory rails have a load rating of 220lbs while a Yakima representative told me that I shouldn't put more than 100lbs on their "gutter" mount system (this is while I was trying to decide if I should order the rails or not).

As promised in other threads, my rails have come off for the car to be repainted so here are some pics. Unfortunately since the entire roof liner didn't come down the interior pics aren't great. What the pics show are:

1. The rear driver side exterior mount location. The silver "discs" are actually raised a bit from the sheet metal. I expect these are part of the interior piece.
2. The underside of the driver's side front mount. The silver plate is the mounting plate. I expect this is missing on non-rail cars. There is a part number, but I can't see the whole thing. It appears that this piece is roughly the same length of the foot pad on the rail itself.
3. The underside of the driver's side rear mount. Sorry for the bad view, but in the middle of the pic is the rearward most mounting hole. Contrary to the front plate, this one appears to be about twice as long as the rail's foot.

What I don't see is any indication of special structural changes, though things might look different with the entire headliner out of the way.

Before this thing gets put back together, is there any additional information/pictures I should try to get that you think might further this cause.

Now someone without rails needs to pull their roof liner down and get some pics so we can compare.

All in all, however, I think a retrofit can be done safely if someone was so inclined.