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Originally Posted by Riwright
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I'd be interested to see the accident statistics with these tee-tiny tow vehicles. I can't see how they could possibly be safe.
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I wish we had better accident stats for all tow vehicles. The reality is that moderate speed is a tremendous boost to safety. In the extreme examples, staying within single digit mph, people tow lots of crazy things safely, like houses and the space shuttle, albeit not with compact cars. Dynamic loads on hitch and suspension components are ordinarily much greater than the static loads, and dynamic loads are much less at much lower speeds, so you could hypothetically get by with more by taking it easy and going slowly.
In Europe, it's real important to use that $7.50/gal gas carefully. Small cars are the only reasonable options for commuter vehicles in their cities. With great care, short distances, and a willingness to replace transmissions, it's possible they can make things work there that might not work as well for us here.
It has to be a big problem finding solid hitch attachment points when trying to make a tow vehicle out of something that wasn't designed for towing. I would expect that to be a bigger issue than horsepower in both Jaguars and Jettas.
I just spent a couple weeks in Europe. Their RV's tend to be modest in size, with the vast majority being caravans (TT's) and Class C motorhomes having lengths in the very low 20's. The ones I saw on the road and in the RV storage areas were also very plain white, without decals or labels so it's hard to know exactly what you're looking at from any distance.