I just purchased a roof rack for my Honda CR-V and will be buying a carrier of some sort soon. I don’t want a large hard shell carrier, because I’m an apartment dweller and don’t have tons of storage space. So, I’m looking at the Thule Sidekick (8 cubic feet) or some of the soft bags. This will serve to hold extra stuff on general trips and my camping gear in a bugout situation. I’m inclined towards the soft carriers and wondered if anyone had any experience with the Roof Bag, Sherpak or Kanga lines (found here) or others you would recommend or recommend against. Thanks much.

I have a generic soft rooftop carrier that I got from the local sporting goods store. Its great because I cab fold it flat and stuff it into a closet. Probably look for a waterproof version for your car.

Thanks much. I'm curious to know how true the "waterproof" claims are on a lot of those bags. Does yours stand up well to the weather?

We have a soft-top we put on a Honda Odyssey. We used it for camping gear. We have had good luck with it.

We recently bought a Toyota Tacoma 4-door, 4x4 with a SnugTop camper shell. So we are out of the car top carrier business now.

To tell you the truth, I never had it exposed to rain while driving, so I can't tell.

I've had 2 different hard shell car top carriers that I've eventually sold off, because I end up using the soft shell most often in combination with my roof basket. It's just a lot easier to use, and much easier to store. They fold up to about the size of a shoebox when not in use, so storing it isn't a hassle.

Mine was also a generic one, worked fine, and only cost about $30. I don't use it for long periods of time, so I can't comment on how well it would hold up to prolonged sun or rain, but in normal rain my stuff stayed dry. If you don't plan on using it very often, I'd highly recommend this route. The only thing you have to watch for is to make sure your roof rack is compatible with the strapping system. Some of them require a certain type of roof bar to strap it down.

I should add that I don't use mine anymore due to a little run in with a low ceiling (you gotta be careful about that). I switched to using one or two really large duffel bags instead, each about half the size of the car top bag. It's a little more convienent because one person can take it off the car while full. Also, the stuff I usually carry never really filled the bag completely, so it never looked like a nice compact cube like in the ads, but more like a deflated balloon flapping around. I think they must stuff those things with cube ballons in the picture to make it looks so neat, none of my stuff was ever that square.

I ended up not using the strapping that came with the rooftop carrier. Insted I used bungees to strap it down to the roof. It worked fine.