I purchased this to go along with a hitch cargo carrier (Pro Series 63153 60" x 24" Hitch Mounted Cargo Carrier (Black) ). I plan on using it with my 2011 Subaru Outback that I've been using a roof basket with for luggage on Christmas travels. The roof basket works well, but is kind of high, our luggage barely fits, and we get some water intrusion through the zippers. I looked at the Pro Series hitch carrier and bag as a solution to make getting the luggage in and out easier, and having a second layer to keep the water out. I'm also hoping I'll get back most of the fuel economy loss I see when I have the roof basket installed on the car. The material this bag is made of is very robust. Heavy and thick. So much so that opening/closing the heavy duty zipper can be difficult, especially at the corners. There is a flap that covers the zipper and uses velcro to stay in place. At the corners the soft yet heavy nature of the material easily bends the zipper in weird angles and that is why zipping can be difficult. Just pay attention and straighten out the zipper and it is fine though. The zipper is pretty large and seems heavy duty. Six nylon straps are included and there are six installed plastic buckles to mount the straps to. There are multiple circular stitchings around each strap buckle location and under normal use they should hold up well. One review said they tore one, they must have really pulled hard to do that. As a test for next years travels I installed the cargo carrier, put the bag on it, then loaded my luggage in to the carrier. We have two larger and two smaller hard case bags. They easily fit in the bag and there is room for some more items. The bag is soft, unlike how it appears in the picture, but is designed with the corners so if stuffed properly it will be rectangular like the picture. However when not fully loaded and the straps are snugged up the bag is collapsed on your cargo. In the test I did it collapsed the top down in such a way that the flap got folded under making it a second flap layer for water to have to get through. I don't know if this will happen again, but if it does it will be even better to keep water out. After putting the bag on my car I checked and it doesn't block my brake/turn lights at all. It shouldn't obscure my license plate enough to get me in trouble either, however before I take a real trip I'll make sure to check that out further. With the luggage in the bag I'm able to open the hatch on the back of my Outback without issue. If it was fully loaded it may have been close to hitting the bag rather than opening. From inside the Outback I can't see the bag or hitch cargo carrier at all from the windows or mirrors. It does however pretty fully obscure my backup camera view. I took a 10 mile trip down the interstate at 75 MPH (local speed limit) and the bag didn't appear to move at all from what I could tell after I got back. After getting back I was able to easily extract my luggage by unzipping only to the corners not fully around them. When we take a real trip this will be very handy. I then flattened it out and used the straps to snug down again and it should stay in place on the tray while empty. Depending on conditions during travel I may either take the whole bag into a hotel, or just pull the luggage depending on how wet and/or dirty the bag ends up. I did notice some dirty water was sprayed onto the bottom of the bag and the side facing the car. This is not unexpected though. It will probably be next Christmas before we get to really use this bag on a trip. However I have no reason to expect it will do anything but work great for us. I'll try to remember to come back next year and update based on our Christmas trip (usually around 2,000 miles). Update January 2016: As I promised last year we took our first long trip with this bag/hitch basket combo and I'm updating with the results. First off, I'm happy I purchased this and it has paid for itself already, I would gladly do that same again. Our trip was about 2,000 miles and during it we ran into heavy rain one day, and snow on a couple of others. During a few hours of heavy rain no water ended up in the bag, except while I was loading the luggage, and therefore I put it there. We stayed overnight in a hotel near St. Louis and it rained overnight, and was raining for the rest of our trip into Illinois. When we arrived at the hotel and removed our luggage, I pulled the straps tight to keep the bag as flat as possible on the basket, and so that it was as secure as could be. In the morning the heavy material of the bag held large pools of water, but removing the front straps and tilting the bag poured it all off. No water was in the bag at that point. In the process of putting the luggage in the bag some water from the bag itself and from the luggage obviously got in, but it was just drops and was negligible. One thing I noticed during full usage across multiple days is that the material is so heavy it can be difficult to work with the zippers. They appear to be very good zippers, but if the top and bottom halves were being pulled in different directions it could be a little difficult to line the zipper up and it took a bit of strength to zip. I found that I was able to get my stuff in and out without zipping past the corners and that made it much easier. I would just zip open the front flat part and put my items in that way. With all my luggage and a few small grocery bags of dirty clothes there was still a good amount of space to do this. I saw similar to the rain situation in the snow. There was a nice layer of snow on the bag that I partially wiped off, partially tilted to get some to fall off, and the rest just waited for road wind and nature to take its course. In the cold (20s - low 30s) the material was still flexible and hadn't gotten more difficult to deal with or brittle. The reality of having a bag like this on the back of your car during thousands of miles of highway and different weather does lead to the bag getting a bit dirty during the trip. There was a general patina of dusty grunge on the bag by the first couple hundred miles, and it kind of stayed that way the whole trip. In wetter conditions it collected some mud spatter, but that was mostly on the bottom, back, and sides. I'll add a few pictures from during/after the trip that shows the condition. All in all a great purchase. Pretty easy to deal with, very weather proof, and survived our first winter trip with it.
