Cars, Cultures, Towing, and Customer Service

My family’s never had trucks – we’ve always had cars that were rated to tow a small utility trailer full of pine straw, load to the dump, or whatnot a couple times a year. I’m not talking about a jalopy dragging a mobile home with one frayed bungee cord – rather a good car with a good trailer behind a professionally installed hitch driven by someone who’s done plenty of towing over the decades.

It’s getting harder to find cars that are rated by the manufacturer to tow anything, and I’ve been digging into this a little. I’ve got family in Germany, and I’ve spent time over there and seen all sorts of cars towing all sorts of trailers, and they get along fine and the continent of Europe miraculously seems to exist without SUVs the size of Panzers.

In America, however, there seems to be a prejudice that nothing smaller than an Excursion has any business towing a jetski, to use a little hyperbole.

One of the common reasons I hear being bantered about is that the engines or transmissions are different. But, for example, when I compare the humble Canadian Yaris (rated to tow 700 pounds - http://www.toyota.ca/cgi-bin/WebObjects/WWW.woa/16/wo/
Home.Vehicles.Go.YarisHatchback-lgxvpnVVtZh7EkmjwkIKyg/
5.11?v124040e%2ehtml) and the American Yaris (rated to tow nothing, http://www.toyota.com/yaris/specs.html) all the hardware looks the same. The British Yaris is rated to tow more than 1200 pounds, even with its smallest gas engine (http://www.toyota.co.uk/cgi-bin/toyo...editorial.jsp?
BV_SessionID=@@@@1319304561.1224440165@@@@&BV_Engi neID=
cccgadefhhgmlfjcfngcfkmdfkidffh.0&deepLink=YA3_Spe cification_new&
nodiv=TRUE&fullwidth=TRUE&edname=specSheet_YA3&car Model=Yaris&img
Name=bv/CarChapter/YA3/Imagery/YA3_spec.jpg&zone=Zone%20YARIS).

I contacted Toyota USA and they said they couldn’t comment on what Toyota’s branches in other nations did. I contacted Toyota Canada and they said they couldn’t comment on what Toyota’s branches in other nations did.

I'm going to withhold some of the comments that come to mind praising customer service and cue cards.

So what’s the deal here? Is the Yaris sold in Buffalo really that different from the one sold in Toronto? Is it the distances involved in the countries (umm… Canada’s pretty big)? Or the hardware (I haven’t crawled all over them, but the websites make them look like genetic twins except for some slick marketing)? Environmental (since when are we more environmentally tight than the Germans)? Personally, I hate to be cynical, but I’m wondering if the real factor in play is how many SUVs and trucks the companies think they can sell in each nation (No, your Prius can't tow a kayak. May we interest you in a Land Cruiser?).

And that’s part of where I wind up caring. Do we have a lot of folks driving around in vehicles they don’t need? If you put a hitch on your Camry anyways, will someone say the warranty was voided?

What’s the deal?