Pulling a trailer with small car

This comes up offen on here. Maybe someone can bring this back for todays cars. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1426440967578530

All I can say is Wow. Guess you work with what you’ve got.

At least it’s a Super Beetle with discs on the front, although it’s debateable how quick that mass would be screeched to a halt in the event of a panic stop… :wink:

You can make a vehicle pull just about anything but the problem is that pulling and towing are two different things.

some time ago at the Back To The Fifties car show up here, I spotted something simalar to this, only it was based on a '32 Ford Tudor Sedan body that had been attached to a newly constructed heavy duty frame, with a diesel Chevy w/ Allison transmission from a 1 ton truck and a full floating Dana rear end. The body (fiberglass) had been "chopped, and the fifth wheel on top was mounted to a substructure under the body shell. All in all, it was a pretty stout looking combo. The owner was from the West coast Even though the camper being pulled was about as big as they get, the guy said it was rock solid stable at speed, and reported zero problems getting over the mountains. He also used it to pull his race car trainler.

It was about five years ago. I’ll see if I can locate those pictures.

Not a bad idea. If they could adapt something like that for a Prius, i bet people would flock to it

I found this link . Its a add for this hitch. http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ShotRod64/media/Cars%20on%20Trailers/rooftoptrailerhitch.jpg.html#/user/ShotRod64/media/Cars%20on%20Trailers/rooftoptrailerhitch.jpg.html?&_suid=13825734682710054950653796173976

I think putting a trailer hitch on the roof of the car is genius, kind of like putting a trailer hitch in the bed of a pickup truck over the rear axle. Putting it on the roof of the car evenly distributes the tongue weight to all four wheels. That’s one reason you can tow more with a truck that has a hitch in the bed than you can towing something with a conventional trailer hitch that is mounted on the frame and sticks out from the rear bumper.

However, if I was going to tow something on the roof of my car, I’d want to reinforce the roof with a safety cage.

Look at the placement of the axles on that Shadow trailer.
It looks as though the tongue weight would be relatively light with that balance and that would be good for the car as well.
Yet , all of the rooftop campers seem to be quite an old concept and I’ve seen nothing like these in recent years.

I think this is about as smart as skydiving with a parachute made from cheese cloth, fun to watch but you know it will end in disaster.

On a trailer, the tongue weight is relatively small. Even on my camper it was less than 200#. By proper loading, the tongue is not over-loaded. It needs to be balanced but just enough for the tongue to have some weight on it so it doesn’t fishtail.

A Prius driver will adapt one of these things to their car, as @bscar2 said

One of 2 things will happen

  1. They will tear the roof off and they will try to get the “hitch” manufacturer to eat the repair

  2. They will fry the transaxle. They will remove the hitch and have it towed to the nearest Toyota dealer. Then they will try to get the transaxle replaced under the powertrain warranty. Needless to say, they will NOT mention that they have been “towing”