Volvo S60: Towing a Trailer

How often and how far do you intend to tow? Depending on the answer, it may be worth it to rent a truck to tow the boat once in a while or get a beater truck for part-time use rather than drill the holes necessary for the hitch. Unless the S60 is a beater or a throwaway that you don't care about I wouldn't if it was my car.

I am not a fan of front wheel drive, and this case is an excellent example of why (IMO)- my stance is: When do you need the most traction? When going uphill on low-traction surfaces (and in that situation when towing exacerbates the situation). With the boat on the hitch, going up a steep ramp, the weight transfers fairly dramatically to the rear wheels, and you are towing a load that weighs nearly the same as the car.

As I said, that's just my opinion....

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:

__ __ Randy & \ \/ /alerie's \__/olvos '90 245 Estate - '93 965 Estate "Shelby" & "Kate"

There are several considerations. One is towing stability. Here in UK we have a rule of thumb which says that, for good stability, the total weight of the trailer shouldn't exceed 85% of the kerb (unladen) weight of the towcar. So for a trailer weighing 3000 lbs, the unladen weight of the car would need to be over 3500 lbs (1600 Kg). I don't know what the unladen weight of an S60 is, but I doubt whether it's that much.

Car manufacturers often publish rather optimistic figures about what their cars can tow - which ignore stability consideration and are based on the ability to re-start on a specified gradient under ideal conditions. Depending on how steep your launch ramps are, you could be really struggling to pull your boat out of the water - exacerbated by adhesion problems with a front-wheel-drive car on a wet ramp. You may find it marginally easier to fit a towball to the *front* of the car for boat recovery purposes, and then reverse the car up the ramp. At least the hitch download would then *assist* adhesion, but it depends to some extent on the relative gearing of reverse vs first gear. You'd also run more risk of getting the engine wet (and salty if it's seawater).

I tend to agree with the poster who suggests maybe finding another way of towing the boat on the odd occasions when you need to, rather than using the S60.

No experience with a S60, but I've towed my neighbour's 2600+ lb. boat and trailer with my '98 V70, and had no troubles. Volvo's AWD may not help you in the situation you envision - the AWD is switched off at parking speeds (to eliminate driveline windup that occurs when doing the tight turning typical of parking), which is of course just when you need it most. One of my father's friends actually had this happen when trying to pull a boat out of the water on a sandy beach - he had front wheelspin, then all of a sudden the rears switched in as he crossed some threshold, and off he went, much faster than he wanted to go.