From an European point of view, I find the average North American's idea of what you need to tow a trailer pretty fascinating. Here's some guy testing the towing capabilities of a modern V6 minivan using a tiny household trailer with a motorcycle on it, and finding that the Honda is struggling.
Meanwhile, here's me towing a load that probably is twice as heavy (around 1.2 tons I think) using a tow vehicle that's comparable in size and weight, with comparable brakes. It has less peak power but I'm guessing more torque at a lower rpm. Still 0.7 tons left of the rated towing capacity, too. I can't say my car felt like it was anywhere near "struggling". It could do that all day.
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@CraigB's*
Ah, cool, another Europe vs America debate with only European replies giving their opinions for both.
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The difference here starts with federal restrictions and rules about how you load a trailer. Here in North America, trailer weight is distributed more forward of the trailer axles which helps reduce trailer sway and reducing the need for those sway bars you see on some trailers, that's where "tongue weight" comes in, how much weight you can press against the hitch ball and rear of the vehicle you're towing with. There are some contradictions here of course, we would have have US regulations without that. What happens when you tow a car? Should we break out a scale? Well, hopefully whatever you're towing can accommodate your decision to just wing it which from what I have experienced over the years is what people do. With that said, smaller, less capable vehicles will struggle much sooner like what you saw in that video. The driver of the van did not his trailer balanced properly hence why he had sway, if you have more of the weight on the trailer central or farther back of the trailer axles, you can sway much easier than if you had the weight more central/forward. This now gets us to the subject vehicle suspension, can the vehicle's rear suspension system handle the extra weight? Typically a family oriented vehicle's suspension is not set up for towing, it's meant for ride comfort which is why they will sag a lot farther than an SUV or pickup truck. Plus, the gearing for the car is meant for fuel economy, not towing, so you'll have the family van in this example aim for the highest gear at the lowest RPM, we've now fucked that up by putting half to 3/4 of a ton behind it which, as you saw, it can manage, but it hops between gears because you're going into overdrive gearing. highway gears aren't designed to manage a ton of weight as it's meant for being on the highway with little resistance to maintain 60-70mph. This was something I remember a guy I was riding with towing a 2.5 ton trailer with in a borrowed GMC dually pickup. Set the vehicle on cruise and if you didn't have it in "tow/haul" mode, it would try and shift into overdrive, work for a little while and then as soon as you saw a tiny incline, it would upshift/downshift/upshift/downshift. Not good to do often of course. The engine is the least of our worries here, a mid-tier V6 is not the issue here.
If I remember right (probably not), the rules in Europe put more weight on the trailer and make the trailer carry as much of the weight. This is also why I think the sway bars are basically a requirement because of where the weight is, you are more susceptible to have trailer sway.
Further, from what I have seen and read, uni-body cars and body on frames with a large crumple zone in the frame have much lower restrictions because they say the frames/body's cannot handle the higher weight, whether that's true or not is of course up for debate because we know that some of these cars in Europe can handle a lot more. When I had a couple of Jeep Patriots (not yours
@CraigB!), I was able to tow a good half a ton or so without issues, even without the tow package which adds a transmission cooler. Would that have been nice? Sure, did it mean I couldn't tow? no, but I wouldn't try this in an area with lots of hills or be close to the 1 ton tow rating? probably not a good idea unless I want to kill the transmission, this was on the CVT by the way.
Personal experience from people I have dealt with over the years, as soon as they can "feel" the weight behind them of towing a trailer, they assume that the vehicle is "struggling" when it absolutely isn't. YOU'RE TOWING SOMETHING HEAVY, OF COURSE YOU'LL NOTICE. Anyone who has moved house notices the moving van they have requiring more braking distance to slow down and longer range to get up to speed, welcome to hauling loads. My brother would help a buddy out moving his 24 foot (convert it yourself) pontoon boat from a nearby river boat slip to storage each season. I have helped him a few times in his 2002 Chevy Silverado 1500 (the supposed "half ton" version). Yeah, it's slower to take off from a traffic light, it takes longer to stop, no shit, you're towing a heavy boat. The trailer had gravity brakes meaning when you braked, the force of the trailer pushing forward meant the brakes on the trailer would then be applied. You felt a clunk and then notice it slowing down with you instead of feeling all that weight on you and your vehicle's brakes. Google tells me this sort of boat with trailer is around 1.2 tons. The truck a 2002 Chevy Silverado 1500, has a max tongue weight of 0.5 tons and 5.1 tons total trailer weight. So we are way under the max limit. With this, you did notice a freaking boat was behind you and my brother wants a bigger truck to handle the load better, even though he's fine.
I would also like to point that North America (reminder, it's not just the USA that has these type of restrictions) and as a personal driving license allows, at least in the USA, you can own and drive a Ford F-350 that can tow a trailer of 16 tons. Another debate for another thread of course.
Simply put, while we can tow most things most people would need, there is this idea that I think is partially a culture issue and consumerism problem where "more/bigger is better" is king, we're not penalized as far as speed restrictions, licenses, and vehicle size limitations for navigating the country, why wouldn't you? It's also why you will see a lot of European folk that immigrate here get the large vehicle for the same reason the rest of us do, why wouldn't you? If the worst of it all is the vehicle price, as well as perhaps insurance and running costs are higher, people don't see those as a worse enough risk to keep them away.
One last thing would you tow the same thing now through mountainous/hilly areas with the same confidence? Probably not which weirdly is how it's always brought to people here, even if you never leave the midwest which you can nearly see the curvature of the earth it's so flat here. I wanted to link a really well done article Jalopnik did called "Tow Me Down" but the link is dead that will basically state the same things here. North American federal restrictions are different from European, there's more personal vehicle restrictions an individual can own than we do as well as road rules.
