Tow car or no tow car
AKA the "toad" We haven't decided if we want to have a tow car or not, so we may just try the first few months on the road without one and then see how it goes.
Dinghy Towing or Tow Dolly
If we do get a tow car, we like the idea of dinghy towing, or flat towing, which is essentially where you pull a car behind your RV on its own four wheels. The Class A RVs we are looking at all have hitch receivers already and as an added bonus, many of the used Class A motorhomes we've been looking at, the previous owner already purchased and installed a tow bar kit such as the ones from BlueOx.com. So you only need to get the proper baseplate for your tow vehicle, wiring for the turn signals, brake lights, etc and a brake system to push on the tow vehicle brakes when you brake in the RV.
The other option is towing any car on a tow dolly. A tow dolly is essentially a half trailer, towed behind the motorhome, that you drive the tow vehicle’s front wheels up on to be pulled. This accomplishes the same effect of a tow truck (not the flat bed kind). The car remains in park, with no parking brake on, steering lock enabled, and the front wheels are strapped down to the dolly.
Dinghy Towing
Wondering if your car can be dingy towed? Here is the 2018 guide which tells you which vehicles are towable in this fashion, how to prep, safety, etc. Here is a link to the 2019 guide with 65 approved towables.
For a tow car, we'll probably just get something small, 5-7 years old, and inexpensive. It'll probably have to be a manual transmission though which I'm good with but Jeri is not!! Our existing cars we mainly use for commuting to work here in San Diego are not suitable for flat towing. One is a electric car lease that I hope to transfer for the remaining months and Jeri’s car we will just be selling.
Tow Dolly
Updated 2/3/2019: Looks like we are going with a tow car. The decision was pretty much made for us by the fact that my Fiat 500e lease, which only has another seven months left, is non-transferable by Chrysler Capital. The next complication is that my Fiat 500e needs to be towed via a dolly. Check out our Towing an Electric Car | Master Tow Dolly Purchase article.
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