Review of Palram Vitoria 5000 Carport Roof

A solid carport made from aluminium framing and polycarbonate roofing. We have tested this to protect our little car as we live in a very weathered part of the world and underneath a tree. We think it looks terrific and bring up its good and bad points below.

The Vitoria 5000 by Palram is a great looking and really robust carport. Once erected, the carport will definitely protect your car from the worst of the weather. It doesn’t have any side walls, but if you are building this next to a building or your own home, this will help protect it as well.

It’s just under 3 metres (9 feet) wide and 5 metres in length, so even the biggest of cars fit underneath, including trucks and MPV’s. It has 7 ½ feet of overhead clearance, which means the tallest of people and cars are fin  There are only 4 main vertical standing struts and these don’t get in the way of your car doors when opening and closing them. We think it was a great way to build this carport, perfect for cleaning and taking care of your car even in bad weather, you can freely walk around the outside of your vehicle, wash and wax it and more, without any obstructions from the carport shelter.

Constructing

We managed to fit this carport together in less than 3 hours with two of us working on it. We would still recommend getting this if it was just yourself building it, but would take a little bit longer, roughly 4 hours and when fitting the 2nd set of legs it could prove a small problem because the structure needs lifting and legs fitting at the same time.

What we really love about this carport shelter is that once you have assembled it, it is not fixed to the ground permanantely, which means, if you move home, you can also take this with you, Palram call it the ‘re-assembly’ option and we really liked it, we actually had to dismantle ours so that we could test others and was very straight forward.

We have attached a build video below which you can watch, it shows how simple it is to put together. One thing we should mention is that it recommends making reinforced footings, or using a solidground (concrete, tiles, etc). We didn’t do this as our car space is on gravel/grass mix and a part of a small country car park. We feel that it should be fine without bolting it in to the ground which wouldn’t take much work either, we just left it free standing. It got quite windy once we had constructed it and didn’t move an inch, nor did it look like it would move anywhere, even in severe winds.

Build Quality

We were really impressed with the build quality of this car shelter, it is made from what looks like really strong materials, which includes the roof panels. They are advertised as twin-wall polycarbonate panels and we believe will stop even big objects falling through.

One of the main reasons we were really impressed is that we keep our car under a large tree, it often has branches falling from it and we wanted to protect our car from this, as well as other bad weather, we’ve had a few branches fall on it and the roof really is solid and strong and would probably stop even more from hitting your car, like hailstones, roof tiles, bird poo, etc. The panels are 6mm thick and virtually unbreakable. An added bonus is they block up to 99.9% harmful UV radiation too.

The framing is made from galvanized steel (which is rust resistant) and aluminium. They are all light enough to handle by yourself and fit together and look really good. The framing is powder coated as well, which gives it a great robust finish, so this should look great for years and importantly it keeps the worst of the weather away from the metals and helps it last longer.

It also comes fitted with integrated guttering, this is great for when its pouring down, the rain doesn’t run off the sides and you can get underneath without getting soaked.

Other Uses

This definitely is a multi-purpose car shelter and carport and we actually used it for more than keeping our car dry and safe.

We had ours fitted in front of our house in a small car park, our spot is in the corner with walls on two sides. When we fitted it, it meant that we could use this space for other things as well. One of the things we did was attach a bicycle wall anchor to the wall at the end and we could keep our bicycles outside but out of the bad weather and protected by the carport. This has helped us a lot, because we have a small garden and no space in the house, nor a garage, we could utilise this car cover for other things, like keeping bicycles dry and safe.

Another great use is for parties, we live in Britain and it rains quite a lot, even in summer. Because our car parking space is at the end of our garden, we could even use this for parties or eating outside under cover. You could use it as a patio cover too.

An amazing car shelter and cover you could use for your car, in your back garden in a patio area and have freestanding or bolted in to the ground. We think it isn’t that much to pay for something of this quality and for something so functional. You can assemble it by yourself in just a few hours, but two people doing it would help, especially with the roof panels and lifting it up on to the 2nd set of legs you add.