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 Topic: Tow car question
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29/6/2020 at 1:58pm
Location: Midlands
Outfit: 2019 VW Arteon + 2002 Avondale Dart
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Hi Dave
Short answer: yes, you can legally tow that caravan with that car but bodies such as the two main caravanning clubs, as well as myself and probably most other users of this forum would not recommend it.
Long answer: of the weights you mention, the "mass in service" is the weight of the car as it left the factory. The "maximum permissible mass" is just that - the maximum permissible weight of the car itself fully loaded. The VIN plate will have a further figure called something like "gross train weight" (which will probably be somewhere in the region of 4000kg). Subtract the maximum permissible mass from this to give the maximum towing limit.
For the Skoda Superb 2.0 TDI, I'm fairly sure that the maximum towing limits are 1800kg for pre-2015 cars and 2000kg from 2015-on (because they're the same as the VW Passat that the Superb is based on).
Provided that your driving licence permits it (and you have said that yours does), you can legally tow any trailer of actual weight (note: not necessarily MTPLM) up to the car's maximum towing limit.
The trouble is that, as Rob says, the towing limits are (a) set using trailers and not high-sided caravans and (b) determined based on the weight of a trailer that the car can physically move from a standstill on a repeated hill start. They have nothing whatever to do with what the car will comfortably cope with in real life conditions, including motorways.
The caravanning industry recognises this, and also that caravans (being long, high-sided and often single axle) are inherently less stable than most other types of trailer, as well as typically being towed for longer distances and at much higher speeds. They therefore recommend that the maximum weight of a caravan should not exceed the car's kerb weight (essentially the mass in service plus an allowance for the weight of the driver). For novice towers, the recommendation is that the weight of the caravan should not be more than about 85% of the car's kerb weight, but this is crude and somewhat arbitrary.
Bottom line: if I was to use your Skoda to tow an agricultural trailer, at low speeds for a few miles to the nearest farm, I would not be at all concerned at it weighing 1700kg. But for a caravan, being towed on motorways across, or even out of the UK, I would not be comfortable towing more than 1500kg.
To comfortably tow a 1700kg caravan you're probably looking at a large 4x4 such as Hyundai Santa Fe or its Kia equivalent (I think that's the Sorrento but not certain), Volvo XC60 or Land Rover Discovery etc.
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via mobile 27/6/2020 at 9:18pm
