After 6 years of using our motorhome as both our camping unit and transportation when traveling we finally bit the bullet and got a car we can tow behind our rig and all the extras to connect it to the RV safely and legally. It’s been a real game-changer when it comes to our camping experience.
The Car
We knew we wanted to tow 4 wheels down because that means the tow vehicle doesn’t put any hitch weight on the RV (which is the same as adding that much cargo in the motorhome) – a major consideration with most class C’s limited cargo carrying capacity. Towing on a dolly or a trailer would put at least 10% of the car’s weight on the motorhome. Our Sprinter chassis is rated to tow up to 4,200 pounds and we wanted to stay well below that and settled on a Buick Encore GX with all-wheel drive. The Encore GX (Not to be confused with the discontinued Buick Encore.) is flat (4 wheels down) towable in the AWD version. It’s a small SUV and is a cousin to the Chevy Trailblazer. It weighs in at about 3,300 pounds so it’s well under the Sprinter’s tow limit and with a 3-cylinder turbocharged engine it has reasonable performance and has enough refinements to make us comfortable.
The Tow Setup
While the car was the biggest item in terms of cost, getting the tow setup figured out took the most work. There are a lot of options out there in terms of tow bars (the device that goes into the RV hich receiver and attaches to the front of the car) base plates (the connection between the car frame and the tow bar) braking systems (required by law in almost all states, also required by common sense) and lighting kits (to duplicate the RV turn, stop & tail lights on the toad).
We chose a Roadmaster Nighthawk Tow bar and corresponding EZ4 baseplate from etrailer.com as a starting point. The Nighthawk is their top of the line, an aluminum tow bar with LED’s to help make your setup more visible at night. It’s non-binding, meaning the arms have release levers to allow you to remove tension due to misalignment between the car and RV. The baseplate has removable front arms that allow for the connection of the tow bars to baseplate. We also went with a Roadmaster wiring kit and their Invisibrake braking system. The invisibrake is permanently installed in the car and uses an air-actuated cable and pulley system to actually pull the brake pedal down and apply the brakes when the motorhome brakes are applied.
Being inherently thrifty (cheap) I bought all the parts to install myself. There are online videos of tow bar, base plate, braking system and wiring installations for quite a few different vehicles including several on etrailer.com of installations on the 2022 Encore GX which helped a lot. Roadmaster’s instuctions are also pretty good and between them and the videos it wasn’t too hard. Tools required were open end/box wrenches, sockets, a trim removal kit, impact drill, wire stripper/crimper and a torque wrench. The install did require the removal of the entire front fascia and making some modifications to it to allow for the basplate, which is kind of scary on a brand new car, but overall it wasn’t too bad. The most involved part was the installation of the braking system, mainly because there’s not a lot of room to get a drill in to mount the pulley for the brake cable. It took me about 2-1/2 days to finish the whole install. I did end up adding a pushbutton battery disconnect to make hooking up easier since Buick recommends disconnecting the battery while towing.
The Verdict
We really like having the car with us on our trips. It takes about 5 minutes to connect it to the motorhome and the RV doesn’t drive noticeably differently than before. We’re getting around half a mile less per gallon, but that’s only 5 or 6 fillups, so the real number could be more or less than that. I was expecting about a mile per gallon less so I’m happy. It’s been really great to be able to hop in the car and drive to a trailhead or to pick up firewood without packing up the whole motorhome and then setting it up again.
We towed the car out to Glacier National Park on one of our first trips with it. Being able to drive the Going to the Sun Road was a great improvement over prior trips where we were unable to go places due to the size of our “car.” It was also nice to drive to some of the communities around the park, especially when the weather wasn’t cooperative. All-in-all a real game-changer.
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