Towcar awards 2013 Coming soon

[RogerL]

Are we talking about the very latest Sorento which came out recently, or the model that replaced the original Sorento. That one looked similar to the latest model but the latter uses a new floor pan and was supposedly meant to address several shortcomings.

The differences between the two floor pans are minimal - it was a running change to accomodate the 2013 Santa Fe but done a year earlier on both Santa Fe and Sorento - the biggest practical change is that holes for side steps are in slightly different positions.
There may be three sets of suspension settings around for second-generation Sorento, 2009-2011, 2012 with the marginally different floor pan and 2013-onwards which is lowered, ie less ground clearance - reflecting the changes made to the Santa Fe from which all assemblies are sourced.

 

[RogerL]

Back to the topic - the winner is ......Skoda Octavia

Category winners were:-
LR Discovery
Jaguar XF Sportbrake
VW Passat Estate
Kia Rio 1.4CRDi
Honda Civic 1.6 i-DTEC ES
Dacia Duster dCi 110 Ambiance

 

[johnandrew70]

Back to the topic - the winner is ......Skoda Octavia

Category winners were:-
LR Discovery
Jaguar XF Sportbrake
VW Passat Estate
Kia Rio 1.4CRDi
Honda Civic 1.6 i-DTEC ES
Dacia Duster dCi 110 Ambiance

Cant believe no one else mentioned the Octavia before, 3 pages and not a mention til it wins shame on you all for not giving it a second glance. The Skoda's have changed since the 80's guys take one out for a drive and you might just like it.
John

 

[Tukums]

Got to thinking about next year

2014 Towcar Award winner will be..................... the new Octavia Estate 4x4

 

[johnandrew70]

Got to thinking about next year

2014 Towcar Award winner will be..................... the new Octavia Estate 4x4

I like your thinking Tukums

 

[JonnyG]

Back to the topic - the winner is ......Skoda Octavia

Category winners were:-
LR Discovery
Jaguar XF Sportbrake
VW Passat Estate
Kia Rio 1.4CRDi
Honda Civic 1.6 i-DTEC ES
Dacia Duster dCi 110 Ambiance

Cant believe no one else mentioned the Octavia before, 3 pages and not a mention til it wins shame on you all for not giving it a second glance. The Skoda's have changed since the 80's guys take one out for a drive and you might just like it.
John

I think you would find plenty of users on here are well aware of the transformation that occurred at skoda once VW took over in 1990s and of the virturers of such cars as the superb and octavia new and the old versions.
but the towcars awards? well there just plain funny, so guessing the winner is somewhat a piontless excersise given some of the past results

 

[Zafiral]

As I said about the Caravan Club's test when the Jetta won, it is time to either reassess the 85% guide for modern ESP equipped cars with low centre of gravities or stop making such light cars overall winners.
Class winner is fine, but an overall winner for a car that under test has only had a van ballasted to 1131kg is stupid. Only 7 vans in the caravan data section have an MTPLM lighter than that & only 2 are 4 births & very small ones at that. In the test they mention 'desirable lightweight vans' like the Swift Alpine 2 yet that has an MTPLM of 1164 kg so outside the 85% guide.
Our first van was a 2006 Ranger 470/4 & that had a MTPLM of 1179kg. That was hardly a heavyweight van & that was 7 years ago so for a significant number of used tourers as quoted in the text you probably need vans approaching 15 years old.

 

[RogerL]

If you didn't allow class winners to compete for overall TCoY then the heaviest would always win.
It's an inescapable fact that caravans have got heavier at a faster rate than cars - when I started, a Ford Escort at 955kg kerbweight was quite adequate for a 5-berth Ace Globetrotter at 800kg gross - can you imagine a 1500kg 5-berth Swift today behind a 1400kg Focus ?
It's another inescapable fact that cars are starting to lose weight again, in the quest for better fuel consumption, new offerings from Range Rover and Land Rover having lost 400kg+ - if caravan makers don't start using lightweight materials then in a decade, the only suitable towcars will be older dinosaurs!

 

[ProfJohnL]

It trips off the tongue so easily yet I 'm not so sure its as easy as some imagine to get today's caravans to loose a significant weight by using 'light weight materials'

Now let me set out the challenge with a bit more detail. Take a current production caravan, and replace all the materials you can with light weight versions, but do not compromise the looks, efficiency, functionality, safety, legality or usability in any way.

What components constitute the bulk of the weight of a caravan?
The chassis and wheels
The body, doors/lockers and windows
The internal fixed furniture & fittings
The sink/cooker
The toilet
The space heater
The water heater
The fridge
The battery
The gas cylinders
The caravan mover

The chassis is probably the biggest single element of weight, so it worth looking at that. Alko and BPW have been in the business long enough to know how to make a good trailer chassis. Through testing I am certain both companies will have settled on the best compromise for strength vs weight and cost. They both use folded and pierced steel plate. The other material they will almost certainly have investigated would have been aluminium, but I'm certain that to achieve the same strength and durability using aluminium would require probably as much if not more weight of material. Titanium or carbon fibre composites would almost certainly offer the same performance with a weight saving but the production costs would be many times that of steel.

The second biggest weight element would be the walls and roof etc. It is only in recent years that the manufacturers have looked closely at their construction methods, and the result has been the recent introduction of 'Alu-tech' and 'Solid' construction systems. Both of these claim to have reduced body weight, with some other side benefits. I'm certain the manufacturers will have reviewed in detail the function of the body, to provide weather protection provide rigidity to the whole caravan, to be resistant to water, impact to provide insulation etc, and concluded that they needed the combination and construction of materials to meet all those demands and at an acceptable price point.

The internal fittings, This is where aesthetics have to be considered to a greater extent. It seems that humans generally do have a natural affinity to wood type finish its warm and tactile, in practice wood does have some very fine construction characteristics. It is relatively light weight for its duty as furniture strength, and it can be easily joined. What other material can be formed into a relatively thin and light weight panel that has the same end on resistance to crushing.

And so the analysis goes on and the conclusion I draw is that without some fairly radical design or functional changes to caravans there is not a lot of weight saving to be achieved.

The weight of an average caravan has increased over the years and I suspect this is mainly due to the drive to produce a home from home with all the bells and whistles.

If we want to keep all these features then to achieve any significant weight saving, we need to be prepared to pay a lot more to cover the production costs of specialist materials, or really get the manufactures to start looking at monocoque constrictions to eliminate chassis components or to increase body rigidity with properly stressed panels and shapes.

Alternatively if we are prepared to ditch some of the luxuries, then weights will fall.

 

[RogerL]

The fact is that having got heavier over several decades, cars are now getting lighter and will continue getting lighter through advanced design techniques and use of higher strength/lower weight materials - the pressure to reduce car manufacturers' corporate fuel consumption will only ever increase and weight reduction is the clearly proven way to do it.
Caravans will need to be designed differently - I don't mean different panel joints like Bailey Alutec or Elddis SoLid, I mean very differently.
Now whether the caravan industry is up for that challenge is another matter - I suspect not as it stands at present.

 

[otherclive]

Prof is absolutely right in his analysis and just saying that van manufactures must do things differently is to ignore the difficult engineering challenge confronting them. Van makers have nowhere near the production runs to make new high tech materials economic, their cost models are totally different to those of car makers. I've often said that today's vans are larger than those of 7 years ago have thicker body panels/ insulation and too many supplied items. I'm 6ft 4 in and have no issues moving around and living for up to a month in our Bailey 2007 Bordeaux yet compared to the 2013 swift parked next to mine it is veritably minute! The Swift is wider and higher by a good margin. Yet our van at 7m with 1150kg MIRO and 250kg payload takes us and two dogs plus grand kids. We've considered changing it a number of times but couldn't really say that anything lit our fire so we've spent the money on extra holidays to far off places where the van couldn't take us.

 

[RogerL]

So - if the challenges are too great for caravan manufacturers, what then?
It doesn't take much of a crystal ball to look forward 10-12 years in car development, that's a couple of complete model redesigns from now, to realise the typical weights that will become common:-
Range Rovers will be under 2000kg, Freelanders down to 1500kg and Mondeos down to 1200kg - that's not to highlight those particular models, all their peers will do the same. It's no good anyone saying they don't want this, it's already started.
In my opinion, caravan manufacturers will have to reduce weights, somehow, because people won't be buying cars heavy enough to tow today's crop of caravans. The only alternatives are for people to run old cars for ever or go back down to smaller caravans.
If you don't think the UK caravan industry can go lightweight, the Chinese and/or Koreans will !!

 

[otherclive]

I think the answer may be in less kit, smaller vans (width,height), and van installed stability aids. With cars having more stability systems and better suspension than ever it may be possible to address if the car can be less weight than the van, but this would need the car makers to ensure brakes, chassis, power train etc can take the extra load without the penalty of extra vehicle weight which would penalise them in the wider market place. If that were to be the case then I know where their priorities would lie.

Regarding Chinese or Koreans making vans I cannot see this, again as the market economics don't support large development funding for what is a niche market in a global sense. Caravans don't have the scale of cars, pickups, and motor bikes.

 

[RogerL]

Regarding Chinese or Koreans making vans I cannot see this, again as the market economics don't support large development funding for what is a niche market in a global sense. Caravans don't have the scale of cars, pickups, and motor bikes.

It's true that caravans don't lend themselves to automated mass production - they're very labour-intensive to build - a real business opportunity for low-cost countries !!

 

[otherclive]

Regarding Chinese or Koreans making vans I cannot see this, again as the market economics don't support large development funding for what is a niche market in a global sense. Caravans don't have the scale of cars, pickups, and motor bikes.

It's true that caravans don't lend themselves to automated mass production - they're very labour-intensive to build - a real business opportunity for low-cost countries !!

that would seem to rule out Korea and China then. Perhaps vans made in Bangladesh are the future!!

 

[ProfJohnL]

The issue that is perplexing us is that as cars are becoming less heavy, the conventional wisdom of only towing a trailer of 85% cars kerbweight is squeezing the size of caravans that we are guided towards.

I have often mentioned that many cars are actually rated to tow much heavier trailers than the 85% guidelines suggest and in some cases well above 100%. This has always been a niggling anomaly which when you look at the facts it fails to make the 85% a logical decision which I have explained extensively elsewhere. Now before anyone starts to accuse me of suggesting we all should tow at above 85%, let me clear that I have always suggested using a the lightest trailer possible.

The crux of the issue is that as the mass of a trailer increases in relation to its tow vehicle it will tends towards becoming unstable. What this simplistic approach fails to take into account, is that its not just weight ratio's that affect a systems stability but a number of factors. One of those factors is definitely speed, and there is a direct correlation between increasing speed and the onset of instability.

The logical extension of this precept is that an outfit that is unstable at a raised speed will have improved stability at lower speeds.

So perhaps some thought could be given to limiting the maximum speed based on an outfits weight ratio, thus allowing a tow vehicle to use more of its specified towing capability. Not a popular move as road users already blame caravans for slowing traffic down, but in fact many commercial vehicles already have lower speed limits than those indicated by the roadside signs. For example HGV's are restricted to only 40mph on many roads where higher speed limits apply to private cars.

Another avenue of thought is there are a number of commercially available trailer stability enhancement systems such as ATC and LEAS. These have earned a good reputation for reducing the number of incidents of instability where they are used. It seems that as with many performance cars ESP systems can extend the safe area of operation of both cars and trailers, so much so that where used it might actually be possible to reliably tow an outfit where the trailer uses up the whole of the tow vehicles capacity even if it is more than 100%

Perhaps where a recognised trailer ESP system is fitted and operational, the industry 85% guidance could be removed, relying solely on the tow vehicle manufacturer's maximum specified towed weight limit.

Both these measure could allow some caravans to be towed with an appreciably smaller car.

 

[Zafiral]

I agree with all the above views, however there ae still discrepancies within the tow tests that really should be addressed. Cars in the same class can weigh upto 10% difference to other cars in the same class then as all cars are ballasted to 85% where possible, there is a 10% difference in what they are towing. Where possible they should all be towing the same amount as otherwise you are not comparing the same thing even within the same class.
Granted each manufacturer hasn't got the economies of scale, but Alko & BPW do have the scale to invest in new materials. However the chassis weight is low down so light weight here could be detrimental to stability.
How many people use their caravan microwave? Even entry level vans such as the Bailey Orion have these standard, yet ATC is not even available as an option.
Our current van is 300kg heavier than our first one, being 3 feet longer & 4 inches wider meaning a realistic change from a Honda Civic to a Ford Mondeo as a suitable tow car. With the next generation of cars expected to be lighter assuming a Family sized car will be circa 1500kg making a 90% match needing to be around 1350kg. Looking quickly at the specs in PC making a suitable match of only 2 mid market 4 berth vans, both Lunar Quasars.
I don't think it will hit new vans too quickly as looking round Caravan Club sites most new vans are still towed by larger 4x4s, but its going to hit second user vans. Looking around used sales sites I notice that twin axle vans carry no premium these days possibly showing that they are difficult to move on.

 

[RogerL]

IMO safety is best served by outfits which are inherently stable and only use advanced electronics to assist AFTER it's all gone wrong.
Good drivers never activate their ABS under normal conditions, nor do they activate ESP normally - so towing should be on the same basis, not activating ATC or the car's ESP in normal circumstances.
This means that the old Towing Ratio guidelines are just as valid today and in the future as they were in the past. Increasing the Towing Ratio guidelines simply because modern outfits have ESP and/or ATC is wrong on principle.
The big problem is that most caravanners have a rose-tinted view of how stable, or unstable, their outfit is - they cruise along at high speed in a straight line, which imposes virtually no risk of instability, and then pronounce how stable their outfit is.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Zafiral
you wrote:-

........Granted each manufacturer hasn't got the economies of scale, but Alko & BPW do have the scale to invest in new materials. However the chassis weight is low down so light weight here could be detrimental to stability....

I don't think there is the market for any of the chassis manufacturers to look toward new materials. Basically its not the production investment cost thats crippling , but more likley how unpalitable their customers would find the cost of the production materials. The way forward is most likley to ditch the conventional chassis and look toward the role of the chassis being integrated into body construction similar to a monocoque car construction, that would reduce the chasis manufactures input to basically a sub frame.

 

[Zafiral]

John
This would again raise the C of G so would not benefit stability. Individual caravan manufacturers don't have the economy of scale to make such a step change. Making the whole structure load bearing is a huge change.
Perhaps new materials would increase production costs, but cars currently use carefully changing thicknesses of metal along a single piece of metal so strength can be kept while reducing weight. Alko & BPW have the economies of scale here for the development, but keeping variable costs down by still only having steel as a raw material.
Saying that I still feel a monocoque structure is at odds to caravans. Lorries & Luton type vans are still separate chassis structures as an empty lorry would be very unstable if there was no extra weight low down.

 

[RogerL]

Saying that I still feel a monocoque structure is at odds to caravans. Lorries & Luton type vans are still separate chassis structures as an empty lorry would be very unstable if there was no extra weight low down.

Trucks/vans have most of their weight above floor level when laden, ie their load - reducing the chassis weight would have little effect on stability - indeed some van chassis cabs have the frame cut off behind the cab to be replaced by an Alko chassis that looks just like a caravan.
If Alko or BPW, or indeed someone new, made a selection of various sized lightweight monocoque moulded chassis, they could supply ALL manufacturers - plenty of economy of scale there - after all the car industry uses common platforms all over the place.

 

[Zafiral]

A empty lorry is susceptible to side winds hence why some curtain siders run open when empty.

Most caravans run relatively empty (you would not think it seeing what comes out of some of them on site!!!) so in my opinion a greater percentage of weight has to be kept lower down.

 

[Surfer]

I think the answer may be in less kit, smaller vans (width,height), and van installed stability aids. With cars having more stability systems and better suspension than ever it may be possible to address if the car can be less weight than the van, but this would need the car makers to ensure brakes, chassis, power train etc can take the extra load without the penalty of extra vehicle weight which would penalise them in the wider market place. If that were to be the case then I know where their priorities would lie.

Regarding Chinese or Koreans making vans I cannot see this, again as the market economics don't support large development funding for what is a niche market in a global sense. Caravans don't have the scale of cars, pickups, and motor bikes.

The Chinese are already manufacturing caravans in volume and are exporting tehm to Australia and New Zealand. The quality is reputed to be high. See here

 

[otherclive]

The marketing hype says they are of high quality but at 3000 kg and $69k Australian dollars hardly a hit in the UK market. Even the pop- top comes in at 2000+kg heavier than most UK twin axles. Having worked in Oz and seen their outfits they hardly match European needs which have far lighter cars.

 

[ProfJohnL]

If Alko or BPW, or indeed someone new, made a selection of various sized lightweight monocoque moulded chassis, they could supply ALL manufacturers - plenty of economy of scale there - after all the car industry uses common platforms all over the place.

One of the principal reasons for considering a monocouque is to eliminate theseperate chassis. So if caravan manufactuers were to go down this route, the current chassis manufacturers would loose this market.