Hi
Seriously thinking about getting a caravan after years of camping under canvas.
We currently have a 1.6 Citroen C4 Grand Picasso which wont tow a great deal (although it will tow a Basecamp).
The car is on its last legs so am thinking about getting something which can tow a decent sized caravan.
Now, currently I am running the Picasso (for the wife) and a tiny Citroen C1 for myself. I was thinking about getting a cheap tow vehicle (BMW Estate or Mondeo Estate) and only using it for the odd trip here and there and for pulling the caravan and getting another C1 for the wife for day to day use.
Would this be worth it? Im thinking insurance for 3 cars but one is going to be hardly used so i dont know if there is a specific policy/company that can do this.
Any suggestions?
L
A decent sized caravan can be anything really so you need to choose a caravan layout that suits you first then look at the laden weight of it (MTPLM) which is found by the entrance door. Once you have this figure then it's time to choose a suitable towcar but as you are novices to towing it would be recommmended to obtain a match of around 85% of the vehicle's kerbweight. It's not a law but a sensible recommendation for safety reasons.
My choice would be the Mondeo every time, The 2 litre diesel is probably one of the best towing cars ever.
Its possibly worth keeping in mind that The JD power survey rates Fords as being far better than BMW as far as reliability is concerned.
It would be worth going on insurance comparison sites and see what they come up with.
I'd tend to agree with dimbles, the Mondeo TDi is a pretty decent tug and unless you're doing 10's of thousands of miles per year, would be not too expensive to run solo. I used to insure two cars for my own use and it was a bit of a pain. Most will only allow one lot of NCB even though it's pretty much impossible to drive two cars at the same time. Storing an extra car was also a bit of an issue.
My advice would be to get a large diesel estate such as a Mondeo (or a Passat - which we use and it's brilliant - Vauxhall insignia, Skoda Superb etc) and run that without bothering to get a second small car.
Our Passat returns around 50-55mpg, which is more than the petrol-powered VW Polo which we also run. Road tax is £30/year (though this increased to I think £140/year on cars registered from 2017 onwards). I'm assuming that if you've been "camping for years" you're an experienced driver so insurance shouldn't be too steep and, whilst servicing will be a bit more expensive, ours has needed no repairs other than servicing and tyres over 80k miles.
You will have to compromise a bit on the size of caravan you end up with - using the 85% recommendation as suggested by tango55 you'll be looking at maximum weight capacities of 1300 to 1400kg. This includes many 2 and 4 berths although there are a lot that weigh more! However if you start looking at larger or heavier vans you also need to start looking at larger cars - probably 4x4s - and the extra associated buying and running costs.
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Topic: Tow Car Choice
