Towcar Of The Year 2026
The prestigious Caravan and Motorhome Club Towcar of the Year Awards are back for their 43rd year! 37 cars were put through a rigorous week of testing, across 13 different categories as well as the overall winner award.
Let us know your thoughts on this year's winners in the comments below.
Comments
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Waste of time!
It's only a few vehicles carefully selected by the manufacturer that gets submitted for the test.
No mention of getting them recharged whilst on route with a van on tow. No mention of towing range in real world conditions. Not even a mention of range on a controlled test track!
No mention of cost! Who among us can afford to go out as and buy a brand new Bentley? Come to that any of them! It's why so many cars now are leased instead of bought outright!
About time this annual fiasco was put to bed for keeps!
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When I look back at the trips we did with both caravan and motorhomes many of those trips were less than 100 miles and quite a few more under 150 miles which should be manageable with a decent electric and certainly a PHEV. There is quite a lot of info on this forum and on YouTube about towing range so most trips are treally just down to planning? It seems to me that most of the negative comments come from people who don't want to own an electric car? It's just a question of planning.
As far as the Tow Car of the Year is concerned the Club can only test what is available within the rules they set which usually means a cae that has not been tested before and one that is either new or has haf a substabtual upgrade from the previous year. Perhaps a Bentley is a bit OTT but you never know when you might win the lottery😀
David
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David, I think this subject has been covered in considerable depth on many occasions. At the end of the day I do not think it is down to personal choice but to the practicalities of the situation that a great many caravan owners find themselves in.
Our tow vehicle is supposed to meet out our requirements and not define how we tow.
We are all different. My last caravan tows are 110, 295, 340, 270, 80, 70, 320, 75, 75, 340, 20, 380, 380 miles. Each of these were done in one day and some included channel crossings. I could not have done these in the same time scales with an electric vehicle.
A PHEV would be a great idea and VAG are now offering suitable vehicles, but at around a £4,000 premium.
My daily drives are short and an electric vehicle would be ideal. I even have a 3 phase supply in to my home address so fast charging could be possible and I would like an electric vehicle.
Whilst tow range continues to be short, campsite charging is limited, charging away from home is expensive, charging with a van attached is difficult and car insurance is higher it is simply not going to happen.
Colin
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I believe the phrase I was looking for is the tow car should be the "slave and not the master".
Colin
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I am trying to work out who the potential customers are for whom the awards have any meaning. For most people, towing mileage takes second place to the needs for solo use, so the choice is bound to be a compromise. I cannot imagine that very many buy a car for the prime purpose of towing a caravan, so other criteria will drive the choice. Often, one has one's own preferences regarding make or even dealer in the vicinity and that will substantially reduce the length of any possible short list, not to mention the financial aspects. What's the point of choosing an award winner when the nearest dealer is miles away and one wouldn't be able to afford to buy the car anyway?3
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We do actually choose a car primarily for towing, although perhaps with a few other needs, such as for travelling in comfort for long distances and the ability to fold down all rear seats to carry more when needed, but these come with bundled with a large tow car anyway. We have a KIA Sorento for towing/long journeys but for daily use we have a small Hyundai i10 which is absolutely great as a town car. Take the KIA shopping in town and it's 25 mpg at the very best.
Certainly like @Lutz we will only buy from local dealers, or perhaps rather have them serviced at local dealers, so if there isn't a local dealer in our area, and I'm talking less than 10 miles, then it's not on the shortlist.
Our ideal new tow car would be a newer style Santa Fe but the towing weights are very limited due to them being hybrids(?) so it might have to be another KIA as they still offer a diesel with a high towing limit. Yes we could look at a Volvo XC90 or BMW X3 but you're then adding tens of thousands to the price which we'd rather spend on being on holiday either with the caravan or not.
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I, for one, am glad that the Club carries out this industry-leading awards programme for tow cars (now in its 43rd year), and it’s frustrating that the critics come out without having an awareness of the facts or indeed the wider picture of the impact of these awards.
The Club has always tested brand new cars, specifically new models for the year ahead, firstly to stop repetition of the same car being re-entered each year but also because it’s a fair test when the cars are brand new with minimal wear and tear. I see a lot of comments asking why the Club can’t test secondhand cars - how could this possibly work? The Club would have to finance the purchase of 40+ secondhand cars which have all lived different lives with varying miles on the clock and varying levels of maintenance in during their lifetime. It wouldn’t be a fair test. The Club instead relies on manufacturers submitting their cars for test, which is the reason why not all manufacturers are represented if they choose to not enter the competition.
With such a long history of testing towcars, the automotive industry generally do actually take the CAMC seriously. Cars are all supplied with towbars by the manufacturers, with some having them fitted especially for the CAMC to use at the Towcar of the Year awards. The CAMC feedback their findings to all entrants, with the aims of helping them improve their designs as time goes on.
The testing process itself is incredibly forensic. It’s not a case of which cars the judges like or dislike, data such as stopping distance and 0-60mph times is collated and test routes are chosen to simulate extreme real world conditions in a controlled test track environment. All vehicles are loaded up to simulate a family of four plus luggage and they’re paired to a suitably loaded caravan with the noseweight carefully calibrated to the towcar’s maximum specified limit.
But it doesn’t stop there, “caravan-ability” judges load bits of typical caravanning kit in and out of the car, test the ease of fitting the detachable towballs, see how easy towing mirrors are to fit… its an enormously useful service for members. If the Club is guilty of anything, it’s not communicating to the members just how thoroughly these cars are put through their paces!
And the list of winners remains active on the website for ten years. I bought my last car secondhand based on the fact that it was the winner of Towcar of the Year some six years prior, and it was an amazing towcar and greatly exceeded all expectations. If it wasn’t for the fact that it got old and needed repairing every so often, I’d probably still have it. So even if you’re looking at these winners thinking that they’re unaffordable, the results of the towcar awards will still stand years down the line when all of these cars are more affordable to most of us. But it all starts with testing these vehicles when they’re new.2 -
I have been watching the reaction to the Club's Tow Car of the Year over many years on here and on other forums and I am not sure CB is far from the reality of the those reactions. OK perhaps some of those reactions have been on the edge of the didcussion rather than the real substance but there are clearly members who see no value in the competition at all? I am not sure the Club are in any position to demand a particular model so they rely on what manufacturers are willing to offer within a criterion set out by the Club. Surely not much different from watching a YouTube car review? I have actually owned at least 3 cars which have been previous winners. Whilst the competition might not have been a deciding factor those that I owned that were previous winners turned out to be pretty good tow cars which may of course been a complete coincidence?
David
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A few points I've been thinking about
I Like perhaps others I think this is just a waste of club money and time (I assume it costs something) and no matter how incredibly forensic it is it is of no relevance to most club members. Some of the cars are too expensive for a start. It is no more than a publicity stunt, but perhaps a very good one . If it's costs nothing then just a waste of time for most members who can only dream of owning some of those cars.
I was wondering how many of these cars do I actually see on club sites? I often see my own car quite a bit but maybe because I notice those more but they are there. Perhaps the club should start basing its choice of cars on what they get on site? I suppose they have the registrations already so should not be that difficult to find out?
Also what is a 'good tow car' v a 'bad one'? Surely a bad one is down to not doing one's homework and choosing a poor choice regarding weights of the car and the caravan? I have always liked a good margin between car and caravan in this respect. Reliability also.
I cannot understand the point made by @CameronBurns about waiting a few years till these unaffordable to most members cars become so. Then you are just buying into very probably a lot of repair bills, as CameronsBurns actually posted. That to me makes a good car (never mind tow car) into a very bad car.
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As per many caravan related sites, CAMC is no different in that for EVs tested, no range figure is ever given, presumably because the figures are so poor. I hesitate to ask if vested interests are involved, but th inconvenience of towing with an EV, primarily charging difficulties when en route, cannot be emphasised too strongly, which should be recognised and highlighted by the Club.1
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@Cornersteady My point is quite simple: members can use the list of winners as a guide when choosing their next towcar, even if it’s up to ten years old. If they’re choosing between X and Y car, and X was a previous years’ category winner, and Y was much further down the list, it might help sway their decision. Just because it’s now a secondhand car doesn’t mean that its ability as a towcar has diminished, provided that the secondhand example has been well cared for.
I spend a lot of time helping first time caravanners take to the road, and one of the biggest concerns of the vast majority of newcomers to the hobby is the question of what towcar to choose. “What’s a good towcar?” I’m always asked, which is a very open ended question. In more recent years I just direct them to the results page for the Towcar of the Year competition. You’d be surprised how many members have new cars, but I think your average member is probably more like myself, who’s in the market for a car that’s between two and five years old so it’s already suffered the majority of its depreciation.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of bad towcars out there. Cars with poor gear ratios for towing, soft rear suspension that negatively affects handling, vague automatic gearboxes that have to be worked hard to get the outfit to 50-60mph, small amounts of luggage space, over-active ABS systems that cause the caravan brakes to lock up… The CAMC is doing a service to members to not only sift through what’s out there and use a panel of expert caravanners to assess them, but also feeding back information to manufacturers because some really do take criticism on board and improve their products based on constructive feedback. It’s unfortunate that not every manufacturer wishes to take part, but all are always asked and given the opportunity to support the competition.1
