That Chev II had the same Powerglide 2 speed transmission as my Malibu had and the full size Chevies had. With a transmission oil cooler it could easily pull that trailer. We trailered all mover North America with Malibu and our fully loaded camper. The Chevy II could have a straight 6 or the compact V8, both capable of trailer pulling.
It can be done, but who would try to go on a US interstate and drive this at 75+ mph:
People would and results could be ugly.
I once saw a mid size SUV pulling a big camper trailer break into fishtail oscillation at 75mph on I-95.
Flipped on its side.
And thatās a very bad attitude to have. Itās literally the attitude that directly led to both Space Shuttle disasters.
I know the reason you canāt tow with hybrids. When I travel the hills of VT I get these nats in hybrids(not towing) who pass me in hills. However once their battery charge is done these anemic vehicles can barely keep the 65 mph speed limit on grades and sometimes only can muster in 50 mph range.
Hybrid companies design the gas engine to essentially do bare minimum of getting vehicle going when charge is gone. However they are well designed to have electric and gas running in unison or independently.
Towing must sap the battery just like a hill and I am guessing wonāt even achieve a safe speed uphill with spent battery and 1000 lbs of motorcycles.
Its engineering!
What type of transmission is used in this vehicle? Is it a CVT? I understand these are not made with a lot of extra capacity built in but are perfectly reliable if used for the application intended. Tuners who make extra power with their engine modifications and such have been known to trash a CVT.
I agree that you could probably get away with this without issues IF YOU ARE SMART ABOUT IT but would hate to have a powertrain failure under warranty.
What is wrong with front wheel drive towing? Had a van with an aftermarket hitch we used for towing a boat occassionally.
The oscillation I experienced at high speed with a boat behind my 4 cyl ford ranger at above 65mph was due to improper weight distribution. Moved everything to the front of the boat and all was fine,
Depends what kind of towing youāre talking about. I personally wouldnāt tow a boat with a FWD vehicle, because I donāt want to be down the boat ramp and discover that the weight on the tongue is just enough to make the front wheels slip, so I canāt get back up or worse yet, start sliding into the drink.
Iāve pulled small u-hauls back when I had my old 80ās Caravan, and provided you have the trailerās load properly balanced thereās nothing wrong with it. A friend of mine has a motorcycle trailer that he hauls engines with, and tows it around with his 90ās Civic.
But many if not most FWD vehicles today have a no-tow rating from the manufacturer which means you probably wonāt be towing with one by default.
Get 2 vehicles. I own a F150 for towing and Prius for everyday driving.
IF I did not have the F150, I would rent a truck everytime I needed to tow. It is easier and more convenient than having to own a 2nd vehicle. Since I already own it, I just maintain it and use it as needed. If you need to travel somewhere with motorcycles, it may be a good time to rent a SUV and tow it that way. Way easier than having an engine or tranny fail on your Prius because you overloaded it.
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Everybody seems to be considering the stresses on the drivetrains of towing vehicles, and nobody seems to be considering the braking and handling issues.
If the drivetrain fails, and thereās evidence that youāve towed, youāre financially screwed.
If the wind blows your tail-heavy rig across the lane into the oncoming 18-wheeler, or if you discover that your brakes are totally incapable of slowing your rig on a descent, or braking makes your towed load want to swing around and swap ends with your car, warranty coverage will be the least of your problems. How your survivors will pay for your funeral just might be the biggest. 
No its called personal responsibility ,you cant keep people safe by saying no (it only makes some more muleheaded.)
The space shuttle disaster was caused by an obsolete BS feel good program that should have been stillborn ,by the time it was implemented.Thay program made me almost breakdown twice ,even the Nazi NASA head ,said "this thing is going to kill people "
Would you drive a car surrounded by a fragile fuel tank,that was insulated by rubber o rings a few inches away,with 2000+ degree exhaust gases pouring through it ? The wonder is that we got away with it as long as we did ,when you read up on the Challenger disaster,it will make you want to cry when you find out what the Challenger crew went through with .
And the original goal was met ,it basically put a hold on manned interplanetary missions.
The prevailing attitude around here is you need a f150 to go to the home depot and get 10 bags of mulch.
Want to tow a John boat? F350.
I tried to prove this point years ago and failed miserably.
How can towing 400 lbs behind a car be much different than a few big guys in the back seat? I am talking a small trailer which has little wind resistance.
Because from a physics standpoint the two big guys are a part of the car. The trailer is not.
Ever heard the term āthe tail wagging the dogā? For every action thereās an equal and opposite reaction. If the mass in action (the dogās tail) is significantly lower than the mass itās attached to (the dog), it has little effect on the dog. If the tailās mass were to become substantial in its proportion to the dogās mass, the tail wagging would flop the dogās rear end around. A trailer being pulled by a small car, especially a FWD car with a light rear end, pulling a heavy trailer is like a tiny Pomeranian with the tail of a full grown Saint Bernard. It just doesnāt work.
Itās an inertia problem. A moving object has inertia. So does a nonmoving object. If the moving object has very little inertial energy as opposed to the nonmoving object, and it tries to push the nonmoving object, its energy will be dissipated in some inert manner, like perhaps heat. If the moving mass has greater inertial energy than the nonmoving object, itāll push it (or penetrate it, or whatever). Thatās why sumo wrestlers get as huge as they can. The mass matters.
Note for this problem that energy is mass times the speed of light squared (E=MC2). So a small mass, like a watermelon, will splatter you if itās moving fast enough. Even engineers can underestimate forces, such as they did after the space shuttle Columbia disaster. Some said that the ceramic tiles could not have damaged the wing, but in tests done after the crash the tile blew right through the wingās leading edge leaving a hole the size of a basketball.
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Usually, if you have a fishtailing problem while towing a trailer, either you donāt have enough of the trailerās weight on the hitch, or you have too much weight behind the rear axle of the towing vehicle.
Load a pickup truck with lead ingots behind the axle and a load of balsa wood in the forward part of the bed and you can end up with a vehicle that fishtails even when not pulling a trailer. If that doesnāt do it, try inflating the front tires to 40 psi and the rears to 20 psi.
A front heavy vehicle is inherently stable, a rear heavy vehicle is inherently unstable, or as airplane designers like to say, a front heavy airplane flies badly, but a tail heavy airplane only flies once.
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Absolutely agree. Its a weight distribution issue. I remember hauling back a load of long boards on the trailer from the cabin for milling at home. They were so long that there was hardly any weight on the tongue. I couldnāt go any faster than 45 mph without the thing fish tailing. At the next town I stopped and bought a couple bags of softener salt as ballast on the front of the trailer and all was normal again for the remaining 150 miles.
Like I said I have pulled a 2000# camper and a utility trailer in snow, ice, rain, etc. with both RWD and FWD. I never had any problem with either. The cars I used were full sized but then the down-sized full sized Buick and the smaller Rivieras. Never had a traction problem, control problem, or braking problem, and used to pull the camper from Minnesota to Florida in the winter. I suppose the car always weighed twice what the trailer did but I certainly didnāt need a pickup truck to pull a camper safely. And there are some pretty good hills in Tennessee and the Black Hills that posed no problem.
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Thereās no argument that weight distribution is key to safe towing.
However, so is having a large enough vehicle for the towed load. I contend that you cannot safely tow a 4,000lb load with a Prius. Or even a 2,000lb load. Thereās still the issue of the ātail wagging the dogā. And thereās also the issue of braking capability (including tire size) and of drivetrain overload. Toyota apparently agrees. The trailer may have electric brakes, but will the brakes and tires of the Prius be able to compensate for imbalances between the two braking systems?
Personally, I would not want to pass a truck headed the other way in a Prius towing a 2,000 pound camper when weāre both doing 65mph. Or even 50mph. Iād be afraid the headwind could blow my trailer aside and it could take the Prius out of the lane. The Prius simply isnāt designed to do this.
I donāt disagree that itās a bad idea to tow a 2000 lb camper with a Prius, but the original poster was asking about towing a trailer designed to be pulled by a motorcycle with a Prius.
We used to routinely tow a Sunfish sailboat from Austin TX to Galveston with a Geo Metro with absolutely no problems, Iām sure a Prius could do it also being that itās a much larger car than a Geo Metro.
With a curb weight of around 3000 lbs, the Prius is not a tiny car. Itās heavier than the Corolla.
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Back in May when this thread was started, it was announced that, in certain markets (e.g. Europe), the 2016 Prius can be outfitted with a towing package.
The article implies that the main reason that the Prius can now tow is better āheat management measures that have been introduced in the hybrid system.ā
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I donāt believe there is a modern car incapable of towing a 400 pound trailer. Who besides yourself has imagined towing a 4000 pound trailer with a Prius?
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Thereās more than weight to consider, you also have to consider wind drag. Back in the 1980ās, I used to haul a 14 ft Hobie catamaran to the lake and back every weekend. The boat and trailer weighed no more than 600 lbs together, the boat itself weighed about 240 lbs, it was easy to tow, until you got on the highway where it felt like you had a parachute hitched to your car. But, by actually obeying the 55 mph speed limit of that era, I managed to tow that boat to Tampa Florida, Lake Eufaula, OK, and Oklahoma City for the Hobie 14 nationals with a 4 cylinder Datsun 620 pickup truck without burning up the engine.
You can do a lot of things if you understand the limits of your equipment. Donāt underestimate how much extra strain going fast puts on your engine and power train.
I thunk it is strange to ask for advice and then argue with it. Both Toyota and everyone hear are telling you not to do it. It is your car, if you want to tow the Queen Mary with it, just try it, but donāt ask for advice and then try to convince every one who gave it that they are wrong. You asked for advice, they gave it.