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The surfboard isn’t tied down….
The kook rides a long board. It’s kinda like driving a full sized Buick designed in the 60’s.
Looks like the trailer’s tongue is sitting on its own jack wheel, not connected to a hitch on the MINI.
Is the little wheel on the tongue a landing wheel?
From this angle, you can’t see that this is the MINI Clubman Dually with the 6.4L Powerstroke Diesel option…
Nice, the trailer has matching alloy wheels.
Trick question really. Americans tend to think that you can’t possibly tow anything without a huge truck. I have two friends with this problem. One has a single horse and a small horse trailer. She takes her horse out maybe once a month tops and bought an F150 just for towing the horse because she couldn’t come to terms with towing the animal with an SUV (Explorer). The other has a brand new airstream and bought a Dodge 3500 turbo diesel to tow it rather than using the BMW X5. Tons of people in Europe tow huge caravans with tiny cars yet on this side of the pond we need a truck to tow an ice chest. Warped much?
All they need is a load distributing hitch:
http://jalopnik.com/5167003/the-shadow-car-camper-malaise-era-genius
If you enlarge the picture, the trailer is not even hooked up to the Mini, nor does it appear that the Mini has a hitch, or even a receiver on it.
Alex, that’s because in Europe those trailers are designed with a smaller tow vehicle in mind. The design of the average European caravan and the average US travel trailer are very different.
Airstreams, on the other hand, are not your average US travel trailer and can be towed with lesser vehicles if set up correctly. Seems to me they are designed more like the European caravans.
That and your buddy with the Airstream probably has his eye on getting a 5’er down the road.
Matching wheels on the trailer, does this mean Mini offers a mobile home option too?
http://www.fritzhansen.com/media(2314,1033)/MINI_AND_AIRSTREAM.pdf
It’s not on fire.
Both of them are awful.
Oh wait it’s not top gear.
I guess the title hints at towing capacity, but I can’t see what’s wrong, the Airstream will easily tow the Mini.
I’ve always been impressed & taken off guard when seeing Lexus LX470’s towing a boat behind them. That’s a relatively mildly-sized SUV (compared to an Expedition, Escalade, QX45, etc) that easily gets dwarfed by a mid-sized boat. pprently it has the torque to do so.
Never saw one towing a metal sausage though.
radimus: that’s not the reason. This is: lawyers.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/the-great-american-anti-towing-conspiracy/
The exact same vehicles are given a tow rating three times higher in Europe than in the US.
Paul Niedermeyer:
I wouldn’t only blame the lawyers for the US tow ratings, European warranties are also usually shorter and less comprehensive.
That americans doesn’t know that cars can tow? You’d be surprised…
Dear Republic of Fritz Hansen,
Please consider this?
To be fair, the Boler/Trillium was design to be pulled behind the old Bug, so the new Mini Clubman could handle one no sweat.
It would look sweeter with a Teardrop.
Oh I get it, the Mini goes inside the Airstream and gets towed by an SUV.
Hah!
After eyeballing the picture for just a second and not really paying any attention the 1st thing that came to my mind was: Why is a Kia Soul towing some sort of Chrysler product (guess I was reminded of those 30s Chryslers ’cause of the name)?
The Airstream is at least twice as heavy as the Clubman is rated to pull. Probably more.
Paul, I think that is certainly one of the issues, particularly where the foreign makes are involved. Have a look at the differences in the tow capacities VW specs for the Passats in Europe and the same in the US. Same car in both area.
For the US domestics I think another big factor is design. Since they started building FWD cars, the tow ratings have gone in the can. For example, take the 2005 Buick LaSabre. Big FWD car with GM’s famous 3800 drivetrain. Max towing capacity is listed as 1000 lbs. Yet when you look at minivans with similar three plus liter V6’s you see a different story. Get the towing package (usually just a transmission cooler) and you end up with a max tow rating of 3500 lbs. Similar drivetrain to the Buick LaSabre I mentioned, but another 2500 lbs of tow capacity. What gives? In fact, look at pretty much any domestic FWD car and the story is pretty much the same. No matter what size engine you have, the max towing is right around 1000-1500 lbs. My 2002 Ford Focus and 2004 Buick Century both have the same max tow rating of 1000 lbs, and the Buick is sporting another 1.1 L of engine and an additional 65 HP. Contrast that with a 1992 Chevrolet Caprice sedan I used to have. 5L V8 putting out 170HP, and yet U-Haul was perfectly willing to rent me their big 6×12 enclosed trailer (GVWR of 4400lbs)for a moving trip. Just to see if they would still do the same I went to their web site and yes they list a 6×12 as an option for that vehicle, but tell their website to fit me a trailer for my Century and the biggest they’ll offer is the 5×8. I looked up the Caprice up on Car Max’s site, and they peg the max towing capacity at 5000 lbs. 5 HP less than my Century, only 65 ft lbs of torque more and yet it has a much higher tow rating, but compared to the Century it’s built like a brick outhouse. I think the domestics have value-engineered the tow capacity right out of their cars for both the reasons you mentioned (litigation and to push people towards SUV’s and trucks) and to simply pinch the pennies. I think they are only designing the unibodies and drivetrains well enough to meet safety regs and operate the car within the numbers spec’d by the manufacturer.
Towing heavy things with small cars is a sure way to destroy transmission.
The surfer hasn’t had advanced driver training.
A trailer running on 18-inch rims? That’s new..
@ radimus :
A body-on-frame RWD car or truck is usually much more capable in towing heavy trailers than the average unibody FWD car. Not only that, most FWD cars aren’t designed well enough for the stresses of towing these days.
“body-on-frame RWD car or truck is usually much more capable in towing heavy trailers than the average unibody FWD car. Not only that, most FWD cars aren’t designed well enough for the stresses of towing these days.”
I call this bullshit.
You have been fed a lie, to make you buy large SUVs and trucks. Cars can tow, cars have been towing since time begun. And cars are still towing, every day, everywhere else in the world but the USA. Americans are the only people on this earth that belives in ridiculous assumptions that cars are not designed to tow anymore. There, I said it…
who paints an airstream?
We used to tow a boat (some 60’s fibre planing hull jobbie with a Merc 90 2 cycle straight 6) behind a 2.5l Dodge Spirit that was converted to propane.
That car had 300+ thousand km on it when we finally gave up on it but it still ran fine with the original transmission still in it. The HVAC was shot and the head gasket got replaced once when it got over 300k. Factory muffler replaced at around the same time, gotta love propane. Though it couldn’t get out of its own way even when it wasn’t dragging a boat.
Don’t forget that most of those Euro towing cars are diesels, with way more torque than your average petrol Accord or Camry. They have the low end “grunt” to do it. They may be able to pull it but I bet it’s slowly, and carefully, as should be done. I doubt you will find one doing 80mph with fully loaded camper like you find the idiots in big trucks doing here in the U.S.
Bullshit, again. It’s not a diesel/gas thing. Cars can tow, it’s as simple as that.
For some reason, that pic reminds me of this one from Hemmings Auto Blog: http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2009/03/11/pinto-air-freight-for-your-light-delivery-needs/
Perhaps the problem in towing with American cars arises from the fact that they’re geared for economy. 80 mph at 2000 rpm is fine, but tow much of anything and you’ll spend a great deal of time in lower gears.
There’s nothing wrong with this picture:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3121/3351377803_823776bec6.jpg?v=0
But when towing sailboat (1.700kgs) and trailer (550kgs/steel) – I would always limit the transmission range by selecting 3, and make certain that the transmission oil was topped up. Total weight of car and hitch was right at the limit for the jeep, and when you do hauls like that for any kind of distance, you might even want to consider getting a separate oil cooler.
Since most people don’t even consider these things, engines and transmissions get destroyed (have their working life shortened by factors), and therefore manufacturers have stopped rating cars for any kind of load in markets where people don’t give a damn.
I have a photo in my office that I Photoshopped of a TR-3A towing an Airstream. This is what I hope to do after I retire. Hopefully one of you automotive engineers can suggest the right modifications, starting with ways to lighten the trailer.
I was thinking of trading my 4.0L V6 Frontier for a Civic with the 5 speed manual. The few times I need to haul or tow something doesn’t justify the bad gas mileage. The only thing I will tow is a 12 foot jon boat; I haven’t weighed the boat but wifey and I can pick it up. I cut and pasted the following from the PDF Civic owner’s manual:
“Your vehicle is not designed to tow a
trailer. Attempting to do so can void
your warranties.
Your vehicle is not designed to be
towed behind a motor home. If your
vehicle needs to be towed in an
emergency, see page 370.”
Why can’t a Civic tow a small jon boat? I thought a car could tow up to it’s own weight. Can I go ahead and buy the Civic and put a towbar on it for the few times I want to go to the lake? And if I do, should I get a transmission cooler? Thanks.
trailer has door on wrong side