Why not have a look on the Ford Kuga owners club site there are thousands of happy Kuga owners that tow with both manual and auto, I happen to tow with a Kuga manual. Probably the best tow car that I have ever owned. At the same time I can see the benefits of towing with an auto,
My next door neighbour had a 14 plate s max with a power shift box that failed at 4 years old and only 50k on the clock, ford wanted 7 k to sort it a independent reckoned they could do it for 4K, they took it to a car supermarket and traded it in for a new discovery,
they were advised that the power shift wasn’t a true auto and had numerous faults with a horrendous repair bill.
They didn’t tow any thing knowing that I’d stick with a manual
Ford made the mistake of calling the PowerShift an automatic, without explaining to consumers that the transmission was really a manual transmission that is shifted automatically. That blunder brought with it a customer expectation that the PowerShift would change gears just as smoothly and behave exactly the same as a regular hydraulic automatic transmission.