The question, “What tow car is the best?” can now be answered thanks to the results of The Tow Car Awards 2014. These are now available at www.thetowcarawards.com and will be published with Practical Caravan, What Car? and The Camping and Caravan Club members’ magazine.
This year’s 56 entries, a record number since the first competition in 2007, ranged in size from a Fiat Panda to a Land Rover Range Rover Sport, valued from £11,000 to £75,000, and included plug-in hybrids and engines as small as 1.0-litre, all competing for 11 awards split across five weight classes and five special categories – Green Award, Money No Object Award, Best MPV, Best Ultralight Tow Car and Best Petrol Tow Car – plus one overall winner.
As choosing a good tow car is important for everyone’s road safety, the cars were tested at the renowned MIRA private proving ground in Warwickshire to give the judges from The Camping and Caravanning Club and Practical Caravan and What Car? magazines a safe but extremely demanding venue to push the cars to their limits in a series of dynamic tests, including high speed stability, hill starts on a 1 in 6 gradient, plus emergency stops and lane changing. The judging criteria also includes practical features such as boot space, running costs, ease of fitting towing mirrors and driver appeal when not towing.
Each car was matched to a caravan (with any stability control devices disabled) supplied by The Swift Group, or a lightweight trailer, if necessary,weighing up to the recommended safe limit of 85 per cent of the car’s ‘kerbweight’.
The new dedicated Tow Car Awards website (www.thetowcarawards.com) has full details of how each car performed, plus a reference to results from previous years. Take a look now to choose your next tow car!
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