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10/10/2018 at 4:22pm
Location: Midlands
Outfit: 2019 VW Arteon + 2002 Avondale Dart
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Legally, kerb weight is irrelevant. There are 2 things you need to consider:
1. Your driving licence entitlements. If you obtained your full licence pre-1997 then you'll be fine, but if not, you may only tow a braked trailer (and all caravans are braked) if the maximum permissible weight (note: not the actual weight) of the car and trailer combined is not more than 3500kg.
Given that your caravan has an MTPLM of 1595kg, it's inevitable that any suitably-sized car will have a maximum gross weight of more than 2000kg, which means that you'll need to take an extra test to get 'Category B+E' entitlement.
2. The manufacturer's towing limit of the car (which should be on either the V5 or the VIN plate in the engine bay). It's illegal to tow more than this.
For many cars, especially larger ones with powerful diesel engines, the towing limit is well in excess of the weight of the car itself, but it does NOT automatically follow that it's safe to tow up to that limit, any more than it's always safe to drive at 60mph if the road has a national speed limit. As I understand it, the towing limit is determined by the weight that the car can move from a standing start on repeated hill starts. It therefore has no bearing on how it would handle a caravan (which, as trailers go, is of a particularly awkward shape) at motorway speeds.
Hence the advice to keep the weight of your caravan to less than the kerb weight of the towing vehicle, and to somewhere in the region of 85% if you're new to towing. It may not be a legal requirement, but it's sensible. That said, it's also worth saying that this recommendation should be treated with the crudity it deserves - it's certainly not the case that you're definitely safe at 84% and will definitely have stability problems at 86%.
You also need to consider what engine the car has and how it will cope with an extra 1.6-tonne box behind the car. Basically, you'll be best off with the most powerful diesel engine you can reasonably afford.
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Topic: towing weights
