Towcar of the Year 2020 Winners

An enjoyable watch.

Sorry but a complete waste of time.

The most bizarre category winner is the up to 1,150kg caravan weight. The winner, the Jag I-Pace, has, in their words not mine a "slightly limited towing capacity" of 750kg ! Happy to be proved wrong but I can't find a single (new) caravan in the UK that weighs less than 750kg. Oh and this car costs £65,000.

How can it be the TCOY 2020? It's still 2019 on my calendar.

I have said this before but is there a surge in sales for the TCOY? 

TCOY has absolutely no value to me and I suspect loads of others.  The results are predictable VW group and often Land rover.  Wouldn't touch a VW with a barge pole and during a recent trip we saw 4 Land rovers on recovery trucks, I x RR and 3 x Discovery Sports.

I want something reliable and robust.  Last trip we did 2600 actual towing miles, returned 29.8 MPG and stayed at 2 sites that were over 2500 feet high.  My car is 8 years old and has approx 103k miles on the clock.  Next car I buy will be 2nd hand and will be from the Far East.  How come TCOY very rarely have Far Eastern cars as winners when in every other car review they come out as most reliable. 

Cynic in me wonders if its down to money

Don't understand this club. They have a tow test every year outside the NEC caravan show and a line of Jeep Grand Cherokee's for you to have a go at towing, but they never have them on the TCOY awards. They don't even do real time testing on a motorway being passed by white van man doing 80+mph and HGV's pushing you closer to the hard shoulder, all done on a test track in good conditions. Until they test every single vehicle then this is a complete waste of time and money.  

It’s a nice jolly for the Club, but not that realistic in terms of the reality of what might be found living and using a particular vehicle. Mind, it’s convinced me that it will be a while before a realistic electric tow car will be along. And a Volvo as the outright winner.....now there’s a surprise😂

As I understand it if it wasn't featured in the test then the reason is most likely to be that A) There was no new model to test and B) the Manufacturer didn't submit a model for testing. I would imagine the Club have to have the permission of any car maker to put one of their cars through such a test?

I thought it an interesting little film.  

David

It was a rather misleading little film, for anyone new to towing and looking to purchase a car. All carried out on a test track by the looks of it, with some professional driver input. Carefully controlled tests, a world away from the kind of conditions every tow journey is likely to throw up, no wet roads, no side winds, no hint of an exposed bridge, no 40 ton HGV overtaking you making the tail wag the dog, no mud when pitching up, no super tight site roads, (how many folks don’t have a motor mover nowadays, other than us?), a mere 36 cars involved out of how many hundreds realistically to choose from? I didn’t even spot one vehicle coming in the opposite direction, let alone having to pull up on a sixpence because the idiot in front of you has tailgated another car! And finally, surprise, surprise the overall Winner is a Volvo. Good cars, but a nice cosy little business deal with the Club hardly lends itself to total impartiality. Best of the 36 I wouldn’t doubt.

On the plus side, it might prompt some into checking weights, loading, making sure everything works before heading off, so not all a waste of time.