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.
I gotta doubt that that’s feasible:
2017 R-Pod RP-176 is a very small travel trailer weighing dry in at 3800lbs/1720kgs, it’s not the trailer in the photo but… It looks about the same size, single axle, short as shit, tear drop shape. And that’s the dry weight, once you add in gear That’s a lot more weight. Typically most people expect to add in about another 1500 lbs/680kg from the dry weight. So that’s a total of about 2400kgs, which is past what that car should tow.
In fact I’m not really seeing any trailers that aren’t pop-ups that would qualify at the weight you’re saying, even without gear.
That’s not to say it doesn’t exist, hell maybe my Google searches aren’t showing me shit from across the pond that would work, but metal is heavy.
I would recommend checking the manufacturer specs. The company is called Wilk, it should be one from the Sentos range. The numbers are literally from the spec sheet.
This actually the reason why I really don’t like it how so many folks take tow hitches off of antique cars as I’m told they used to be on damn near every car during the 50s and 60s today while yes today they are quite impractical but like you don’t have to have a trailer on a hitched car 247 but still your making a already impractical car and making it slightly more impractical
Tow hitches are an essential thing for me, even though I would never tow a trailer. Reason being? Bike rack on the hitch. It’s so much easier to load then on the roof, no risk of destroying anything and carrying bikes on the roof is not possible with heavy e-bikes. You don’t need a flatbed to carry 2 bikes to your destination (as you can see in the picture)
People think you can’t tow with cars? What?
They just love to take every excuse to buy a truck
Holland is mostly flat ground.
Yeah but these are usually taken to France or Germany where uphill definitely exists.
The camping trailers I see here in NA are absolutely fucking huge and perhaps quite a bit heavier built? I have no problem whatsoever towing a small European camper trailer with my wife’s Mazda 2 (which has a hitch as opposed to my electric car which can’t tow shit).
So you buy a stupidly large car to tow a stupidly large camper. I see.
Well, I don’t. I’m just a tourist here in the US and Canada. You could probably criticize us for owning two cars in the Netherlands, but we’re trimming it down to one company car (with private use included) as soon as we can.
We only tow my wife’s work trailer and camper trailer (converted to coffee stand). But we don’t use a stupidly large car for that.
I did not mean you, I was just expressing the logic of the people doing that.
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
While you don’t need a massive truck to tow things, I also can’t recommend towing with a VW Golf. Towing isn’t just pulling a trailer, it’s also stopping a trailer, keeping it steady at speed, and having a transmission that can handle it and keep temps in check. Longer wheelbases do help with stability at speed and sports brakes aren’t built for towing.
You can bet your ass that if it’s certified to pull a certain weight in Europe, all these things have been taken into account.
Easy Google search shows this car should not be pulling a travel trailer.
Motorcycle trailer, sure. But basically best case scenario this trailer is at it’s tow capacity, which does not give much wiggle room for failure.
But most likely it’s quite past the tow capacity. It’s tow capacity is 2000kg/4400lbs. A travel trailer’s dry weight is already close to that. If it was a pop up camper that’d be one thing, but this is a full dead ass travel trailer. It’s probably around 5000lbs, and who knows what’s stuffed in the back. This is a safety issue.
Quick edit: this is not to say you need to own an F150 for the one time a year you do this, but maybe rental?
It’s also possible to have cars modified to increase towing capacity. I’m not saying this particular car has had that done. But you do see a lot of Dutch towing trailers in Germany. I’ve never heard of anything bad happening, other than them clogging the fucking motorways with their slow ass jalopies.
What’s the test? Any videos and documentations of these tests?
You are completely correct I was essentially trying to move along the conversation from the last post.
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. 😄
That’s about half a trainload of people in all those cars. Sidenote: trains very rarely get held up by slow moving traffic.
Where do you hitch a camper to a train?
You can also camp without a camper, just carry a tent with you.
Just make sure it’s rated for the load you’re towing and whatever works.
But that’s the point. The same exact same vehicle rated in Europe will not have any rating in the US and they will tell you how you need a truck to tow.
Of course, otherwise you get a fine for endangering traffic.
![[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}