Kiwis love to tow things. The Ed is no different. So to kick off our new towing feature he hitched up his ‘mate-build’ trailer to the latest version of Ford’s top-selling Ranger 4x4 and towed his Drift car to and from the Evergreen Drift Park at Meremere to mix a little business with pleasure.
Contemporary turbo-diesel-powered, four-door, dual cab utilities like the (sleek, blacked-out Ranger FX4) Ford had just put on its test fleet when I got in touch re this ‘opportunity’, make great tow vehicles.
In fact, every time I see (and wince involuntarily inside) some old boy struggling along in a medium-size front-wheel-drive two-litre SUV trying to make headway with a six or seven-metre caravan swaying away behind, I wonder why he didn’t buy a dedicated tow vehicle – like a ute – in the first place.
But that’s a yarn for another day.
This one is about towing my 1350kg (wet and with me in it, weighed on my local refuse station’s weigh bridge) 1989 Nissan Skyline drift car on a (yep, and I had several good reasons to go down this particular track) single-axle trailer.
Back to the Ford Ranger, though.
The reason dedicated, light commercial vehicles like the Ranger Utility (and its SUV cousin the Everest) are better at towing than – say – a similar ‘large car’ or SUV is that the Ranger/BT-50/Colorado/Triton/D-Max/Amarok etc, are still built on a separate ladder chassis (like a bus or truck) with a monocoque body bolted on top.
That means that your tow bar is bolted to two immensely strong ‘girders’ from which all the various mechanical bits and bobs are hung; rather than to the relatively thinner pressed steel panels of the welded together monocoque body (with no separate chassis) of a contemporary car or ‘soft SUV.’
While I am NOT saying you can’t or shouldn’t tow your trailer/boat/caravan/whatever behind a typical modern car, station wagon or SUV of monocoque construction, what I am saying is that you will notice a big difference if you ever get to tow the same trailer/boat/caravan/whatever, behind a vehicle with a separate chassis.
The major difference will be a more solid, more direct feel through the steering wheel, to the point where, bar the extra weight slowing down your acceleration time and requiring longer to scrub off speed, you will wonder sometimes if what you are towing, is still there!
The latest trailer sway mitigation programmes that manufacturers are equipping more and more of their vehicles with, tend to mask the inherent differences between old-skool ladder-frame utilities and modern monocoque chassis SUVs (and larger passenger cars and station wagons).
However, my own direct experience on my private towing test loop (aka the southern run up the Bombay Hills says the differences are still there.
Hand on heart I can honestly say that I have never had a Trailer Sway system ‘kick in’ as I have been boosting up the Bombays in whatever full (i.e the VW Amarok) or selectable part-time 4x4 Utility which I have been driving).
That said, I have felt a weave coming on twice in recent times while towing the same trailer/drift car combination while behind the wheel of a monocoque chassis SUV.
One I addressed the issue by the simple expedient of ‘slowing the f..k down’ and giving myself the verbal equivalent of a swift upper-cut to the jaw for being such a dick and endangering myself and the other road users around me.
The other I let the software do the job for me, which it did and I continued on my way, suitably chastened.
My point here boils down to fitness for purpose, one not lost on my fellow drifters on a lazy Friday at Evergreen.
Me arriving in someone else’s ‘flash new ute’ always elicits some good natured ribbing. However it is obviously not just me who has cottoned of to just how practical a contemporary turbo-diesel double-cab utility when you have a drift car, six sets of spare wheels and the usual assortment of jacks, tools, lubricants etc, to tow to and from a meeting.
I’m kicking myself now, because I didn’t take a photo but I swear, bar a young bloke who towed his S14 Nissan on an A-frame behind a Nissan Terrano, every other drifter at Evergreen that day arrived towing their cars behind 2WD and part-time 4WD utilities just like ‘my’ Ranger!
Case proved m’Lud!
