Q&A: What tow vehicle should I buy?

Question: We’ve recently become empty-nesters and are planning to vacate the nest ourselves and head off to explore Australia. We’re looking at a sizeable caravan so we can do it in style, but I’m wondering what car would do a good job? We’re novices at this towing thing and need all the help we can get. – Margaret and Ken

Answer: There’s a lot more to towing than simply hitching up the caravan and heading off into the sunset, as we wrote here recently.

The biggest mistake many make is overloading their rigs. So grab a calculator to make sure you are not about to break any rules or endanger yourself or other road users.

First things first: calculate the weight of the caravan and anything you’re planning to put in it, from knives and forks to water containers and bedding. It all adds to the weight of the trailer and must be taken into account when loading up.

Obviously you don’t want to be busting the tow capacity of the vehicle, but you also need to take into account the GVM and GCM. The first is gross vehicle mass and is everything in the vehicle, including people and luggage.

When calculating GVM you also need to account for how much weight the caravan is pushing down on the rear-end of the car; every kilogram of towball down-weight (usually about 10 per cent of trailer mass) must be subtracted from the overall load capacity (or payload) of the vehicle.

The second acronym is GCM and that is the entire weight of your vehicle, everything in it and whatever you’re towing (it’s how much the whole thing weighs if you drive onto a weigh bridge). Again, there are strict limits on that, and breaking them can impact your vehicle’s performance, safety, warranty and legal standing should something go wrong.

You also need to be aware of braking requirements; any trailer between 750kg and 2000kg must have some form of braking and anything over two tonnes needs an electronic brake controller, which allows independent adjustment and control of the brakes on the trailer.

Then there’s balancing the trailer, which can be an art in itself. And it could also be worth doing a towing course with an organisation such as Tow-Ed.

As for the car, be aware that despite their big claims many tow machines can’t carry a whole lot if you’re dragging the maximum trailer weight behind it. As a general rule we’d recommend knocking half a tonne off whatever the claimed max is. And if you’re determined to take the maximum then make sure all the calculations mentioned above are spot on.

SUVs that do a great job of towing include the Toyota LandCruiser and Nissan Patrol. Plenty of utes will also do a decent job, including the new Ford Ranger V6 that brings class-leading towing and payload capacities.