SportRack Vista XL Rear Opening Cargo Box,Black

We bought this to use on my 2017 Subaru Outback for our 2200 mile, 4 day road trip when we recently moved from CA to IL. It was easy to install, and fit on the crossbars perfectly. It was fairly lightweight too. I drove with it on my car for about 3 weeks while it was empty, prior to our trip, even though I know I wasn't supposed to, and it was fine (all local roads, no highways though).It held all 3 of our suitcases plus some pillows and blankets. It was a huge help for storage during the drive since my car was packed, as I had two 30 inch pet cages in the back with our 4 cats in them. We moved in December, so we were bound to encounter some sort of weather, and boy did we! On day 3 of our drive we were headed into a huge snow storm that spanned about 600 miles, which was to be our whole trip for that day. We wound up going north and out of our way to avoid driving in the snow storm all day, but we still drove in it for about 6 hours. It held up great, and the inside stayed dry even though the outside did get a good amount of snow and ice on it. There were a few hours where the roads made the drive really bumpy due to all of the ice and snow covering the ground, and it didn't budge or loosen up at all (we checked to ensure it was still secure every night when we stopped at our hotels).I was averaging driving about 65 - 74 mph during the entire trip, and it didn't seem to be a problem. My husband was driving his car behind me the whole time, and he said when I went over about 75 mph he noticed that it would shake and bounce around more, so I tried to stay below that (but honestly I went up to 80 mph at times when passing a truck for example). I noticed that on the 2 lane highways whenever a semi truck would pass me going the opposite way, my whole car would shake and I was really worried that the lock would break or that the cargo box would go flying off my car, but it held up great and did it's job. I would often slide the cover for my sun roof open so that I could check on it and see the bottom of the cargo box from through the glass, and I noticed that it would bounce slightly as I was driving from the wind but again I was going about 70 mph most of the time so that was expected, and it didn't cause any problems. I did not notice any wind noise at all, however I did get about 5 mph less average gas mileage than usual.It was very sturdy and got us and all of our stuff to our destination. I am happy to have it now for any future road trips, and would definitely recommend it as an inexpensive, sturdy cargo box.

Very satisfied with our purchase. If you need some extra storage space for your vehicle, the Sport Rack Vista XL offers a lot of value for the money!We are a family of 6 (plus a dog), that does a fair amount of cross country travel since grandparents are spread out between Georgia and Texas. As the kiddos have grown, so did the space required to get everyone and their luggage packed in for a trip (not including Christmas presents like this past trip!!!). We previously had a soft sided roof top carrier that we used during our cross country move, but I did not like how it strapped down to the car, and required the contents inside to create some sort of uniform shape to the bag so it could be strapped down. I spent a lot of time researching options for a hard sided cargo carrier, and ultimately settled on this Sport Rack Vista XL box.We purchased this box right before our Christmas trip the year from Georgia back to Texas. The Amazon delivery service used to deliver this large item was very quick and easy, and we got the GIANT box delivered to our house and ready for the trip in just 3 days from order (and I requested a one day delay in shipping so someone would be home to accept). The cargo box comes fully assembled and arrived in excellent condition.Overall construction of the box is really good. The base of the box is molded well with a lot of ribbing to provide support in the bottom tub for your luggage/cargo. There is some side to side movement of the lid possible when its in the open position, but that is to be expected as the box is made from lightweight ABS plastic, and does have some flex/give in it. The lip on the lid where it meets the bottom tub when closed makes a nice secure fit between the top and bottom, and gives the box and lid a lot of structure when it is closed up. The hinges and latches all fit the box nicely and work well, and the overall fit and finish on the box was very nice. Mounting was very quick and easy on our factory Honda Odyssey rack. I had it installed in less than 10 minutes (including un packing). The mounting hardware provided is decent quality, but nothing particularly special (its just a few u-bolts, plates, and winged nuts for hand tightening).To be clear, I don't have any first hand experience with build quality on other boxes available to compare against, but from my research I feel that quality of the SportRack box is higher than that offered by other budget offerings like Walmart/Academy/Jegs/etc, and was pretty close to on-par with what I think you get from the higher end brands like Thule/Yakima/etc. SportRack is apparently owned by Thule as well, as shipping documentation on the box showed it shipped from Thule Inc. I also found some supporting info online that said Thule had purchased SportRack as their more budget friendly product line. I will say that the side hinged offerings of Thule's higher end boxes would make loading the box a little bit easier, but I didn't have any real heartburn getting the front hinged SportRack Vista loaded from the rear. Quite honestly, I still loaded the SportRack Vista it from the side, you just have to put the luggage in at the rear of the side where the opening is the largest, and then slide it forward. Not real difficult. *IF* you a little on the short side, or your vehicle is particularly tall, a side hinged box might offer better ease of loading. That said, the front hinged box does offer some extra security in regards to wind load not working against any of the latches. The SportRack Vista is essentially un-openable while driving down the road, as the air movement across the box would tend to keep the lid pushed down.Overall the box allowed us to load ALL of our big boxy suitcases on top of the van, along with some other assorted boxes/bags, and kept the rest of the interior of our car available for more oddly sized/delicate items, and anything we needed quick access to on our trip. This was one of the first trips that we didn't have an avalanche of stuff falling out of the back when we opened the tail gate, and didn't require us to go digging if we needed something. I'm also happy to report that we had no issues with the weather-resistance of the box. We essentially drove through non stop rain/drizzle both ways of our 900mi trip, and had ZERO issues with anything getting wet. There is no rubber seal between the lid and base, but the way the lip of the lid fits over the lip of the base, water doesn't have any real way to get in between the two unless it was just completely submerged. I certainly would still be careful about what you put into the cargo carrier overall, but I am VERY satisfied with how well it did with the weather.As far as driving feel, we pretty well did 75-85mph the entire trip on the freeway, and got not so much of a sound from the box, and it rode just fine. I didn't see any real impact on our mpg, although I'm sure there was some minor reduction if I actually calculated it out closely. Its a pretty large box sitting on top of the car, what do you expect? That said, its overall shape is well thought out, and it cuts through the air nicely on top of the car.If you're looking for a nice cargo box that is better than the budget offerings but can't really justify the cost or need of a Thule or Yakima at 2X the price, this box is HARD to beat. If I were going to leave the box on my vehicle all the time, or use it every weekend to haul outdoor equipment, absolutely go with a premier brand. For us though, this will be hung from the roof of the garage, and pulled down and used 2-3 times a year for the next how many ever years, and I'm expecting it to continue to give us the same great value as it did on its inaugural trip this past week.