Caravan and Motorhome Club Towcar of the Year 2019
Our 36th annual towcar competition has put a variety of the latest cars to the test – vigorous testing at that!
We assessed 35 cars at the Millbrook Proving Ground, everything from driving handling to caravanability. After thorough examination and number-crunching, the results of this year’s towcar awards are in.
If you are shopping for a new towcar, our write up on each make and model will offer insight to help you with your buying decision.
Find out who the winners are here: 2019 winners
Comments
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OMG! A 999cc VW Polo.
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cannot believe this from a 1 litre
Power (bhp@rpm): 188@3500-4000
Torque (lb/ft@rpm): 295@1750-3250the VWUK website states 1 litre has 115ps where the 2 litre GTi has 200ps and thats a 6 speed DSG not 7.
seems they got it wrong again so cannot take the results seriously.
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As these were the category winners ....
Caravan Weight Under 1100kg - Volkswagen Polo SEL 1.0 TSI 115PS DSG
Caravan Weight 1100kg - 1350kg - Peugeot 3008 Allure BlueHDi 180 EAT8
Caravan Weight 1350kg - 1500kg - Volvo XC40 D4 AWD First Edition
Caravan Weight 1500kg - 1700kg, Best Family Towcar and Caravan and Motorhome Club Towcar of the Year 2019 - Volvo XC60 D5 PowerPulse AWD R-Design
Caravan Weight over 1700kg - Volkswagen Touareg R-Line Tech 3.0 V6 TDI SCR 4MOTION 286PS TiptronicPick-Up - Volkswagen Amarok Highline 3.0 V6 TDI 4MOTION 258PS Auto
Best Large Family Towcar - SKODA Kodiaq Edition 2.0TDI 190PS 4x4 DSGCan we assume that it was sponsored by VAG? And not a 'proper' auto to been seen ....
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Does anyone actually buy a car on the basis of a Towcar of the Year Award? I doubt it. Most people have their own priorities which don't necessarily tie in with what someone else has reputedly 'tested'. No car that I've ever owned was a TOTY winner and yet I've been more than happy with most of them. The only one that I had which was marginal was a 1.8 petrol Vectra, but even that may have been OK with a smaller caravan.
They don't test them at the limit anyway, only within the 85% weight ratio, so the results are no help to anyone not wishing to abide by the recommendation.
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It’s such a narrow field of entrants that it’s really of little use.
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Agree, there is very little there of value for someone to take notice of it before purchasing. I would hope that a little homework would be done by a prospective buyer before coming to a decision, rather than pick a winner from a limited list.
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Agree with point above and myself and Lutz had agreed on this before, you buy a tow car on your own set of parameters, but I think the comment by one judge sums it up;
"Towing just got cool!"
Judge's comment
Is it just me (probably) but since when does cool (unless it's talking about the air con?) a viable benchmark for a towcar? Above weight, pulling power...
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I'm never likely to tow myself but as a complete novice I think I would look at this type of result for guidance. After all the club claims/is a leading one on caravanning. Thus I would expect to visit their website, these days but publications of theirs too, for a minimum of a starting point. I would naively assume that they tested ALL cars available on the market before coming up with winners. I certainly didn't realise I was THAT green 😂😂.
I know enough not to start with a car salesperson, but I fear these results are as bad!
Just my humble green opinion. After all if I want advise on a subject I go to what I consider to be an expert in that area 😲😲
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Same old, same old.
I'm sorry, but I cannot take these results seriously when there are errors in the test vehicles performance, the same bunch of 50-60 year old testers and such a limited field of tow cars.
Before giving an award as TCOTY, where are the vehicles of Landrover, Toyota, Jeep, Hyundai, Kia, Jaguar, BMW and Mercedes? Are the club seriously suggesting a Volvo is a better than all the others I've just mentioned? Granted, it's an ok vehicle - but it's not in the same league as a Discovery, for example! (I don't own one by the way!)
Come on Club - let's have a fair playing field
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I feel the field of vehicles is now so small it’s really not worth bothering with the competition at all.
It used to be the case that it was down to manufacturers to enter their vehicles into the competition so only those cars put forward were judged. I wonder if that’s the way it works today?
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I've just got my copy of the magazine with the towcar supplement. I actually thought it was a bit better this year as the vehicles were grouped by weight rather than price.
Jonray, there's several vehicles of the makes you mention but like all these things it's the opinion of the judges that give the final winner.
At the end of the day however, as has already been mentioned, it's your own criteria and judgement that count.
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Bought an XC60 D5 R Design a couple of months ago, so can heartily agree it is a great towcar. The best? In my eyes yes because it suits my needs down to the ground, but that is a very personal thing!
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Regarding the selection of cars being tested. My understanding is that to be included in TCOTY a car has either got to be a new model or had a substantial upgrade since it was last tested. Also some manufacturers don't always put their cars forward. This might explain why cars you expected to be there are not?
David
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Fascinating insight in to towcars and vans. I'm a bit surprised at Bailey and Alko!
As a sufferer of Alko/Bailey axle failure I note that the Unicorn Segovia as towed by the Mercedes is ballasted at 2104Kg somewhat over the Segovias 1767Kg MTPLM. Now I know this was not on a public road so anything goes. But this would be illegal on public roads!!
3 or 4 of the heavyweight towcars demanded a van ballasted beyond MTPLM
I wonder if these vans get sold on!!!
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I'm surprised that they use regular caravans. At work, when we did our towing tests we had caravans made specially for us without any interior fittings except for shelves for ballast. There was one single axle and one twin and both had chassis rated right at the top limit of what one would expect would be towed by a normal car. However, because they had no interior fittings, they had a very low MIRO. Consequently their weight could be adjusted to almost any value to suit the respective towcar. Another advantage of having such custom built caravans is that load distribution inside is also almost infinitely variable, which was useful for tests under varying conditions.
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I think it is very difficult to discern what is being tested from the vague summary results published. Looks very subjective. Are they testing the vans ,the cars ,the drivers, the tyres? I guess it is a dynamic test, so isolating the towcar performance alone would need much analysis.
Perhaps this is the one application where a driverless car would help?
It might be more informative to test cars at 70, 85 and 95% weight ratios this might give enough data to objectively assess towing characteristics. Basically a towing vehicle, trailer ,driver etc is a control system, a control systems engineer would never base critical stability or any other assessment on a single data point.
One only has to look at what is monitored on an F1 car even with all that data and analysis problems persist.
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IMO To find the best towcar they should test it to the car's maximum towing capacity rather than this outdated 85% figure.
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I like to read about tow car of the year, it helps you to think of your next tow car plus listening to people and chat on here. I think its good they have gone on weight instead of price. as I like many other people can not afford new cars. I am pleased that my now car is in there and a winner. but I choose my tow car for my needs . now towing with a touareg the best yet but maybe not as good as my next one?
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