Subscribe RSS FeedI’ve been putting off writing this blog post for a long, long time, because I think most of my friends are tired of hearing about our “Super Prius”. But, I wanted to get my experience towing with a Prius out there for other Prius owners to read. So, here it is….
My wife and I own a Prius “classic”. It is the original Prius, 2002 was the last year they made them. To make a long introduction short, we were moving cross country, wanted to save money, so we bought a 2″ receiver hitch for our car. (The thing that you slide a ball into so that you can tow a trailer). Many on the internet said they had done it, there were MANY nay sayers. But, we did it anyways, that was 3 years ago, and it worked great! The hitch costs like $250? And installed with only a ratchet in about 10 minutes. Since then we’ve used the 2″ receiver hitch on our Prius to haul: a 3/4 ton load of building debris to the dump, tow a Kia off of an on ramp and into a parking lot, move my truck with a tow bar off of a car carrier, carry 5 bicycles to a mountain bike outing, and take 300lbs of Ikea Furniture home on a platform that attaches to the hitch, along with at least monthly use doing miscellaneous other things.
And it has performed spectacular. Now, before you go off and try to tow a 3/4 ton load of debris with your Honda Civic, you should know… There is an art to properly loading a trailer, the secret is in properly selecting the amount of tongue weight, and then driving carefully… Towing a heavy trailer with a small car can be very dangerous if you aren’t careful. The problem with the Prius is that it is a Uni Body car, there isn’t a SOLID frame to attach the hitch to like there is on an SUV of a truck. Thus, it cannot take much tongue weight. I try to keep it down to under a hundred pounds, the 300lbs ikea furniture on the platform was really pushing it. So, when you load the trailer, you want to put as much weight over the axle as possible, and make sure that you evenly distribute the load that won’t fit on the axle so that the tongue stays light. Now, here is the drawback to no tongue weight… Tongue weight becomes rear wheel weight on the towing vehicle. And so, the more tongue weight you have, the more traction you get. To a certain point. If you get too much tongue weight, or the hitch is a long distance behind the rear wheels, the tongue weight actually removes weight from the front wheels, causing a dangerous situation. So you balance it. Not too much, not to little. And, unless your trailer has it’s own brakes, you give yourself extra room to stop, and you slow down significantly in wet weather.
Anyways, if you are wondering if you can tow something with your Prius, my advice (which I absolve myself from all liability should you do it) is to go for it! The engineers at Toyota did a fantastic job designing the 1st generation Prius, and it is up to the task.
