we had a soft carrier for years that we could compact and fold up for storage, then we bought a Yakima hard case to go with our new Pilot and new crossbars which I mentioned below.

the new one looks cool and sleek, it's a bit of a pain to put on compared to the soft one b/c it's heavier and more likely to scratch the paint getting it on and off. mostly the hassle is you have to have a lot of space to store it. We keep ours in the shed in our backyard but it's 7 feet long, 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep. That's a lot of open space required in your shed/attic/basement. And we don't even have the biggest one- we went long rather than wide- it actually takes up less floor space than wider ones b/c we store it standing on end.