We have horses and it scares me silly that a lot of people know nothing 
about towing and yet still fit a tow hitches to a totally unsuitable vehicle 
and tow a 2,200 kg trailer (with 2 horses).

We looked at a number of vehicles when we considered buying a trailer.

An average weight of a horse trailer unladed is about 850kg, a Vauxhall 
Frontera 4 wheel drive vehicle is a favourite of horse owners (*cheap), but 
has a towing capability of the Toyota Avensis 1800cc saloon car I had at the 
time!
The best towing vehicles we found were land rovers (2,500kg) and the Range 
Rover (3,300kg normal, OR 6,000kg at 18mph in "emergency").

In the end we bought a 1990 Range Rover, and about 4 months later the 
trailer was stolen!

Since then I converted a 7.5ton Iveco Truck and use that instead - the fuel 
consumption is slightly BETTER than the Range Rover and it stands me at 
about 18,000 ukp in cost, but it is much safer and more comfortable :)

If anyone is even slightly interested the conversion "blog" is here
http://www.jimfranklin.info/truck/index.html and for some reason Google 
likes it with a search for    horsebox conversion   it has hit 1st place in 
the search for the past 3 years!

/waffle over



On Wed, 7 May 2008 20:59:59 -0600, Cedric Chang wrote
> Actually I have a Mazda Miata sports car ( circa 1990 ) with 160K  
> miles that I installed a receiver hitch on and I have a teeny 
> trailer  that I can put 600 lbs on and the trailer weighs about 150 
> lbs ( I can  bench press the trailer ).  I changed the suspension on 
> the trailer  from leaf springs to air filled inner tubes. cc
> 
> >
> >
> > On May 7, 2008, at 8:38 PM, Herbert Graf wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 2008-05-08 at 14:30 +1200, Apptech wrote:
> >>> My car has no trailer hitch and the manual says not to put
> >>> one on.
> >>
> >> And ?
> >>
> >> Roof rack.
> >> Roofbox.
> >> ... ?
> >>
> >> I'd almost certainly fit a trailer hitch if I was in in your
> >> situation.
> >> As long as insurance does not disallow it it is extremely
> >> unlikely to be a terrible idea.
> >
> > Unfortunately most of North America has an incorrect opinion on
> > trailers. Most of us think that to tow ANYTHING you need a big truck
> > with a V8 engine.
> >
> > Fact is pretty much ANY car is capable of towing 1000-1500lbs. While
> > most cars do have a tow rating in the manual, most dealerships will
> > claim it's not a good idea. That's rubbish.
> >
> > In Europe OTOH towing a trailer is common. I've seen VW Golfs with tow
> > hitches. Yes, you can't tow a 5th wheel trailer with a Gold  
> > (safely) but
> > a small trailer is no problem.
> >
> > TTYL
> > -- 
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> >
> >
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