I have to agree with hp80 on this one. Although I couldn't tell you exactly what it is, I'd be willing to bet that those struts serve a specific purpose, and moving them, if possible, would be pretty difficult and expensive. Now I could be wrong but I think its a safe bet. There are all kinds of bike racks. You can get one like hp had a pic of, you can get one that goes on the roof, or one that just straps to the trunk (I used to have one like that for my last car). You should definately consider looking into that.