Just looked it up - it is tiny! Smaller than a Ford Fiesta! Tall, narrow and short = wobbly handling, i suspect. 3 cyl. engine... May be perfectly OK as a city driver, but it would be close to dangerous (for the driver) on the highway... I had a Geo Metro 3 cylinder manual tranny at one time and I was getting 50mpg highway with it consistently. But it would blow around in winds a lot by itself - i can imagine (never tried it) that with a couple of large kayaks on top, a car like this might not be a good idea at all, unless kept under 60 mph on smooth roads for short distances and no large hills ;)
I suppose with a trailer it would be good for what you describe though. My Metro was only 45 horse powers and could keep up with traffic just fine if not loaded... But it felt much better drafting 18 wheelers than splitting air on its own ;)
Makes sense to choose a car for Kayaks In the thread above, a post says it doesn’t make sense to choose a car specifically for kayaks unless a lot of shuttling is involved.
We only run a couple shuttles a year but the kayaks just stay on the car for 6 to 9 months of the year. Otherwise we would do half as many paddles. Wednesday, Thurday, and Friday nights we often would not paddle if we had to go home first and get the boats off the racks and then load them on the car. It adds about 10 hours a week of paddling to our warm weather kayaking.
I highly recommend that you really do pick your car for paddling so you can leave the boats on top and paddle more often.
Last year I paddled almost every weekend. For me it's not that much of an inconvenience to load and unload my boat. I can do it in under 10 minutes. What takes me time is finding all my gear!
I'm speaking from personal preference, though, and if you like to keep your boats on top of the car, which makes sense, you make a good point. I'd rephrase my point to be that small cars needn't be excluded from the menu.
Actually I use Kayakpro EZ-Vee. They come in multiple lengths to suit different hull types (mine are 7’ and 8’). They are powder coated aluminum, welded construction with adapters for either Thule or Yakima. I made my own adapters for my aero cross bars.
I initially bought a Goodboy as my second carrier, but sold it and got another EZ-Vee. I liked the light weight, but not the bolted construction, or the rack connection with exposed bolts. Also, it carried the boat several inches higher, which I wanted to avoid.
