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 Topic: Re. Toyota Celica Tow Car
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15/4/2018 at 8:32pm
Location: Cheshire
Outfit: Kampa Croyde 6 Air Classic
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Hi there,
The common belief is that torque accelerates the car and caravan and drags them up a hill. This is not quite true, it's actually the horsepower produced at that moment which is a measure of work done. The work being increasing the speed or lifting the mass up a hill.
Using some rounding (to illustrate), a Nissan Qashqai 130bhp diesel is a modest tow car compared to the size and weight of a modern caravan, however this produces almost twice the torque of the Celica throughout the useful rev range though this drops off after 1500 rpm in the Nissan whereas the Celica is quite flat.
Work done (Horsepower) is torque x rpm
To get the same amount of work from your normally aspirated petrol engine you would need to near double the rpm of the Celica to the Nissan.
So a Nissan at 2000 rpm makes around two thirds of peak power, say 90hp whereas the Celica makes less than a third say 45hp.
At 3000 rpm the Nissan will be making approx 125hp while the Celica will be approaching 65hp.
That's a huge difference in how the car feels to drive.
To compensate you need to change down a gear or two and use the revs to maintain the work rate. 5th and 6th gear are likely redundant while towing and I'd have no surprise if you needed 3rd gear on a significant motorway climb to ensure you have enough rpm x torque to satisfy the work requirement.
You have a couple of options, use more rpm to the extent your comfortable with, 4.5k should be fine for a short sustained climb (though your fuel consumption will take a battering). Or ease off a little and let your dream car make it's own pace. There aren't all that many really steep high speed hills so I expect it will make less then 10 minutes difference to your total journey time... you're on holiday after all.
As a side note, petrol turbo cars are a reasonable compromise, the turbo endows them with a decent amount of torque across a wide rev range so while not as relaxed as a diesel, they can be effective tow cars for the mid range. The main penalty is fuel consumption as diesel fuel containes 18% more carbon than petrol, you get a lot more carbon to burn for your cash. Diesels are also naturally more efficient and helped by the lower engine rpm.
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