Off road and towing credentials

A friend opened up to me recently. He was keen to take the family on a bit of adventure but admitted in all his years of driving, he’d never actually ventured very far off a gravel road, and more importantly, he had never towed anything.

To put it simply, he was more than a little nervous.

It seems there’s some sort of unwritten rule, heartily reinforced by advertising, that everyone who drives an SUV is entirely capable of backing a dual axle caravan up a 38-degree rutted slope with one hand on the wheel, and the other conducting a car full of well behaved children in a cheery rendition of ‘Road to Gundagai’.

And while I’d like to suggest that this describes a typical weekend for me, the reality is very different.

To set my friend’s mind at ease, and restore his confidence that his trip to Northern Victoria would be less daunting than he imagined, I let him in on a little secret. The truth is, that for basic off-road and towing work, modern 4x4 SUVs like the Holden Trailblazer do most of the hard work for you.

In fact, when you need to hitch up the Jayco or Quintrex or maybe engage low-range for a muddy ascent, the 4x4 SUV has your back in more ways than you realise.

The Holden Trailblazer LTZ is the perfect example. It’s an affordable, family-friendly, seven-seat 4x4, and a perfect candidate to show that capable off-road and towing performance can be in your hands, right from showroom floor.

Out of the box, the Trailblazer is supported by a 3000kg towing capacity and it’s likely that you’ll never haul anything that heavy. For context, a regular camper trailer comes in at around 1000kg and your standard outboard aluminium fishing boat on a trailer is not much more.

It’s only when you are hitching up something like a dual-axle off-road caravan that you will be dragging something over 2500kg, but even that is within the Trailblazer’s comfort zone.

Hitching up is simple thanks to the rear review camera that allows you to perfectly position the car every time you need to connect the trailer. And the Trailblazer’s combined load mass between car and trailer of 5700kg, means it can manage plenty of people and kit along with towing a load.

Power to do all this comes from a 2.8-litre four-cylinder Duramax turbo-diesel engine, that offers 147kW of power, but more importantly a solid 500Nm of torque. Perfect to keep things moving when you need to.

Keeping you safe on the move is a blind spot detection system -- very handy considering you’re now a much longer vehicle -- and a forward pre-collision alert system to ensure you aren’t too close to anything in front.

Perhaps more importantly for first-time towers though, is managing the very different dynamics of having the load out back. The Trailblazer is fitted with a trailer sway control system that constantly monitors the way the vehicle is behaving and will apply individual brakes, or lessen the engine output, if it detects any swaying movement from the hitched load.

To help even more, along with the four-wheel disc brakes on the Trailblazer, the big Holden features a grade-braking function which will use the engine and gearbox to help slow the car when on a steep downhill section.

When it comes time to parking the trailer and heading off on a rough and tumble adventure, the shift-on-the-fly four-wheel drive system in the Trailblazer means you can effortlessly switch from rear-drive, to high-range four-wheel and low-range four-wheel drive with the twist of a rotary dial in the cabin.

Here too there are a range of driver assistance features to help you negotiate challenging terrain. There’s hill start assist and hill descent control – both great features for newcomers when it comes to tricky hills.

Throw in Holden’s DuraGrip traction control system, and you’ll be amazed at where a showroom standard Trailblazer can go.

I will share another secret too… Everything, whether heading up or down, looks much steeper from in the car. So rest assured, even with the Trailblazer’s 28-degree approach and 25-degree departure angle, your first time adventure off the beaten track will seem a lot more extreme and exciting to the people in the car, than to the car itself.

Like my friend will shortly find out, you can enjoy a fun and exciting time touring and exploring, making lots of great family memories (and perhaps a few cool Insta snaps thrown in), and Holden Trailblazer will barely break a sweat.