I still find it frustrating to see the exact same vehicles get significantly different tow ratings here vs Europe.
The other day the dealer tried to warn not to tow my utility trailer with my car as it would hurt the transmission (trailer was empty by the way). I pulled up an article from the UK where it was in the top three of best towing cars for this year.
Dealer looked at me like his brain needed to reboot, after which he told me the cars in Europe must be built differently or get different transmissions and left it at that.
It’s truly baffling that manufacturers here hold that towing capacity hostage for arbitrary reasons.
This seems not very fuck cars but ok. Also who does not know you can tow with a car?
I think this is in response to stupid large truck vs kei truck thread that made the front page. All the car brains are going on about how everyone ever needs a stupid large truck to tow 85 boats at once
I had a 2005 Camry which broke down last year, so I replaced it with a 2015 Mazda 5. The towing section of the manual for the Camry said something along the lines of “Well, this car is not really intended for towing, but if you must use it for that, here’s what you have to do…”. For the Mazda, the manual just says that it is not recommended to use the car for towing at all.
if you saw the sheer scope of trailers, campers, Tour Bus RV’s, custom toy haulers etc that invade the coastal areas of where I live, you would realize the problem isn’t the semantics of tow vehicle size. the whole “adventure camping” myth when two people bring a 800 square foot Motorcoach with a car in tow makes me want to vomit. its like a car brain with sepsis. leave your fucking house at home.
Just yesterday I was towing about a half to 2/3 of a cord of a wood with my wagon. Folks assume you need a giant truck to tow anything. Full disclosure though I was pushing the limits of my car, it pulls this weight without issue but stopping it risky and I have to drive very carefully and keep huge buffers between myself and the next car.
I agree but diesel cars are much more common in Europe and they have better towing capacity due to higher torque.
Something interesting about a camper like in the picture in Europe, to me, is where the axle is. It looks much more centered than the campers I see in the US and I have no idea why. The way the axle is in the picture certainly reduces tongue weight on the car. I wonder if the trade off is less stability at high speed? Genuinely curious!
The typical tongue loading for a traditional trailer like that is 10%. If you start getting too light it will start swerving from side to side at higher speeds and can lead to a jack knife accident from the tail wagging the dog. Most likely the trailer has heavy stuff designed into the front.
Wouldn’t this be more an issue of manual vs automatic transmissions? I would think towing in a manual with a healthy clutch should work just fine. Whereas, I would towing could have negative implications for the lifespan of a car’s automatic transmission.
Forget the wear and tear of towing and look at the towing capacity and safety. Cars here in the US aren’t rated too safely tow much, hell even trucks have a pretty low limit.
So either the car in the picture was rated to tow a higher weight (could be the unibody or frame, or other structural components), or the laws there are more liberal towards towing safety and weights, or this is an ultra light camper that is safe to tow.
Not all campers or cars are made alike, same with laws around them.
You forgot the other option: The owner doesn’t know / doesn’t care about the safety limit and is rolling the dice.
This is the most likely situation, that car has a towing capacity of 2000kg or about 4500lbs
Travel trailer of that size is probably about 5000-6000lbs.
So this is what you’d call dangerous, and good luck if there’s a hill.
That trailer is only street legal weighing max. 1300-1600kg.
The question isn’t “can you”, but “should you”.
An engine that’s always working at near it’s maximum capacity will fail long before an engine that’s working at a quarter of it’s capacity. Most people wouldn’t dream of constantly running their engine bouncing off the red line of rev limiter. The same applies to towing; if you frequently tow large, heavy loads (for instance, earth moving equipment), you want to get a vehicle that’s rated for much higher tonnage than the weight you’ll regularly be towing. Given that campers are usually very light weight (but only slightly more aerodynamic than a brick), you can get away with towing on in a car infrequently. You should probably not do it daily.
You may also find that it’s less fuel efficient to tow a heavy load in a small-ish car than the same load in a light truck.
(BTW - I’m generally opposed to taking vacations in this way. I prefer my vacations on a motorcycle, or on foot with a backpack. I’m not currently in the kind of shape I would need to be in in order to do bicycle camping.)
Edit: I don’t have a truck. It’s cheaper for me to rent one on the rare occasions that I need one than it is to buy one and deal with the associated costs of owenership. That said, the Home Depot rental trucks suck, because they’re solely RWD, and they have no grip on my road unless there’s a literal ton of weight in the back.
(for instance, earth moving equipment)
That’s quite some reach.
Any time I’ve needed an earth mover, it was always delivered? Who’s out there picking up a earth movers themselves?
Really? Home Depot and Sunbelt Tool Rental doesn’t deliver around here. You have to pick that shit up yourself, and they will check the gross towing weight before they’ll let you hook up. I’ve towed a wood chipper from Sunbelt with a Civic, and it was pretty much the maximum that the car would tow.
Sorry, when I hear earthmover I think backhoe, grader, skid steer, not wood chipper.
Regardless, sounds like your civic met the need instead of a RAM 2500 super-duty?
Well, except for the part where then engine skipped timing and died a terrible death few months later. So, I dunno, did it really meet my need? Or was the engine failure purely coincidental? I do know that the mountain roads around here are pretty rough on cars in general; towing at your max capacity while going up a steep grade probably isn’t very good for an engine.
Renting a truck would have been far, far cheaper than what I spent replacing the engine.
I don’t know your car, it’s possible. I’m not here to judge people on their needs analysis, I’m here to judge people for not doing a needs analysis.
The point is people should buy vehicles based on needs not wants. The chance of maybe towing a thing up a hill one time in a 15 year vehicle lifetime is probably not a satiasficing for a vehicle that’s primarily used to travel 8.7km each way for a commute and a 1.8km round trip for groceries 5.43 times per month. (Canadian figures).
Dutch people must not have many steep hills.
Don’t worry, we’ll even tow them to and trough Norway.
Yes, going 50 km/h on a 80 km/h road with 300 cars behind them. 😄
![[image] Since many people seem to believe you can't tow with cars, here's roughly what dutch people end up doing on vacation.](https://feddit.de/pictrs/image/ea1db421-ccea-4e3d-af37-aec9b3e62de4.jpeg){kind=link}