Caravanning without a towcar

Firstly, thank you for all the responses. Secondly, my apologies for the lack of clarity in the original post. Having looked into it I'm fairly confident that our car should not be towing our caravan.

We bought our first caravan 3 years ago having bought the 63 plate Peugeot 5008 (2.0L HDi 163 horsepower automatic Allure) with the intention of using it as a tow car. The caravan dealer assured us that our car would be a suitable tow car pointing out the kerbweight of 1694kg. Our caravan is a 2005 Abbey Aventura 317 with max laden weight of 1304kg (77% of our car's kerbweight). 

We were nervous of towing and have regularly checked our carvan's weight using a weighbridge and packed carefully keeping an eye on the noseweight. We have always driven carefully and have never had a problem in the three a bit years of touring. 

We were considering a larger caravan to accommodate our growing daughters and my wife was checking with a dealer whether our car was a match when he introduced us to towing capacity. He entered our car registration into their 'computer' and it came back with a maximum towing weight of 1200kg. As I understand it towing with this set up invalidates our insurance and is not legal. On checking the car's plate we found that gross train weight - gross vehicle weight was 3530 kg - 2330 kg = 1200 kg.

We've looked for four berth caravans under 1200 kg and have investigated changing our car early which we can't afford at this point in time. We've looked at hiring tow vehicles (which is a possibility) and using a caravan delivery service (which is too expensive to be practical) but, to cut a long and rambling explanation short, I was wondering whether anyone had a plan C! Perhaps we need to follow Jill's suggestion and make friends with someone with a towcar!

Thanks again.

Rob

I just thought I’d mention...

For practical reasons, we went without a tow car for a few years. I got a friend to tow the van to a campsite near Newton Abbot (Twelve Oaks). The arrangement was that they would store it for me, and put it on a pitch when we wanted to visit. From memory, the storage costed around  £400 a year, with a £10 charge each time it was pitched, pitch fees on top. I’m pretty sure other campsites offer the same service.

Good point, thank you Freddy.

We've got a quote from a nearby campsite for £1000 for the season (Mar-Oct) but they're open to negotiation!

Rob

As far as I ma aware the maximum train weight means that from a legal point of view as long as the actual combination weight does not exceed 3,530kg then you are legal regardless of maximum vehicle weight. For licence categories it is based on Max vehicle weight. For other purposes it is actual weights.

Many do

Hi, a very quick check on tow car.info gives a different perspective and looking at the figures you quote also seems to suggest that it’s OK?

Hi Allen and Jean. Thank you for that - I had a look and it certainly seems that it may not be as clear cut. Just to be clear, looking at the numbers...

GTW = 3530 kg = caravan and car can't exceed this?

GVW = 2330 kg = car can't exceed this regardless of being solo or towing?

Digging out the weighbridge ticket from when we went to Norfolk earlier this month, car = 2130 kg, caravan = 1300 kg. 

As the combined total is less than the GTW does this make it road legal? And the caravan mass is still well within 85 % kerb weight. I think this is the point that EasyT was making?

From what my wife says the person in the dealership was pretty adamant that towing anything over 1200 kg would categorically be illegal and invalidate our insurance. I think we may go back to the dealer for clarification. 

Thank you for your patience!

Everything I have read would indicate that you are legal.  Try the Club's outfit matching service (I gave up waiting!) to confirm this.

Hi Rob, You latest post figures seem to confirm that the outfit is ‘legal’.

Who knows why/how the dealer arrived at their figures-a simple mistake maybe-but it looks OK.