Honda CR-V or VW Tiguan

The VW every time, in my view.

The salesman really wants to shift that CRV.

I agree. I can't speak for the diesel CRV but I had the petrol 2 litre version and I thought it not the best towcar certainly not a patch on the XTrail I've got now. 1.6 seems a bit underpowered perhaps 

Another vote in favour of the Tig.  If, like me, you use CLs and CS's, a 4WD is a must in my opinion, given the vagaries of UK weather.  I tow with a Touareg - the Tig's 'big brother' and even though I've had a succession of Discos, the VW is the best tow car I have owned.  Whilst I won't knock Honda for reliability, all I can say from my experience is that I'm now on my third VW - a Passat and two Tregs and none of them have ever been near a garage for anything other than servicing.

I towel a caravan up to end of last year with a VW Tiguan. Always pleased with its towing abilities and have not had any problems. I think possibly that the boot space on CRV will be bigger but a smaller boot never caused us any issues. 

Sorry can’t see the point of a 2 wheel drive CRV with a 1.6 engine.  I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.   I have a 2.2tdi CRV 4x4 and it’s a perfect.  No experience of the Tig so couldn’t comment.  

The real questions are do you van all year long. Can you wait till June, is there another dealer who can fulfill your order.

Oh dear.  No recommendations for the CRV.  My husband has found a Practical Caravan Review on YouTube which says the 1.6  is a good but not exceptional towcar and he really likes the deal we've been offered, indeed it's such a good deal it would allow us to have a small car for us to use as a runaround as well, keeping mileage off the towcar.

 We've tried lots of dealers re the Tiguan but all say there is a backlog of orders since they have developed a new engine.

We don't use CLs so a 4wd isn't essential, although I can see the advantages.

We really need to consider this carefully and I'm most grateful for your advice.

Up until May last year I was towing our Sterling Eccles Sport 514 with a 59 plate manual Honda  CRV 2.2 . I had no problems but decided to change the car to a  2013 VW Tiguan 2 litre TDI auto. 

I by far prefer the Tiguan with it’s reassured handling/feel and having also the auto means the driving is far more relaxed. I would agree that the boot on the CRV was slightly larger but I can live with that.  I have found the fuel return comparable between the two.  

A 1.6 has not had very good write-ups in any make you can only extract so much power from a relatively small engine, smaller underpowered engines have been reported to be heavier on fuel consumption when towing. My vote would be for the VW.

Does it have to be one or the other of those two cars?

Have you considered similar sized offerings from KIA: Sportage or Sorento; Hyundai: Tuscon or Santa Fe and Mazda: CX5.

My brother-in-law towed with the 2.2 CRV for many years and was very pleased with it. When it was written off a couple of years ago he purchased the 1.6 CRV as on paper the specs were quite good. Unfortunately the towing performance was nowhere near as good as the 2.2, especially when towing uphill.

With this in mind I would go for the VW but why not consider, Sportage, X-Trail or Kuga?