Up until last year I used a trailer with Smart but the nuisance was finding space for the trailer and the car, with a large motorhome you definitely need something to pop into town etc, this year I have a Chris Cox towing frame, everything I can understand from my studies make this perfectly legal as the towed vehicle complies with lighting regs,braking regs and becomes,in the eyes of the law a trailer, you therefore need reflectors (whether lights on or not) and display the reg number of the towing vehicle. All this complies to UK regulations and therefore is legal in all other European Countries. Because the custom made frame cannot be used unless the towed car has the necessary front bar and brake coupling it cannot be construed as a 'recovery frame' which can be used ONLY for recovery of immobile vehicles and nor for towing. I'm in Spain now, been through Portugal and live in France, I've never been stopped except once by a Spanish traffic cop who just wanted to see how it worked. One of the other motorhome sites actually has a 'quote' from a DVLA official saying much the same thing, you can print it off in several languages if you can find the site.
Sorry to disappoint but there are some significant inaccuracies in the above. the most obvious one is that regarding the brakes, although the set up used meets the regulations for service brakes it fails to meet the requirement should the trailer become detatched. This states that in the event of the trailer becoming detatched from the towing vehicle brakes on
all wheels should be applied (and stay applied) by
mechanical(i.e.cable or rod)means. This is the reason that despite the extra cost and complication trailer manufacturers us rod & cable systems.
The second point never properly address by those attempting to part you from your money is one of control. Anything constructed for use on the road should be capable of being under proper control at all times, this would include the ability to reverse and not just for a very short distance in a straight line. Unfortunatly the only reason a car tows forwards and follows the towing vehicle is due to the castor angle of the front wheels, this natural means the wheels will swing to full lock when trying to reverse. This is a matter of physics not skill.
Another point not considered is that all vehicles regestered since 1997 are required to meet "Whole vehicle type approval". In effect this means that not only must the vehicle itself be type approved, anything that is then fixed to it must also be, and the fixing points it is fixed to must be specificly for that purpose. The most obvious application of this is in the fixing of towbars, a fuller explanation can be found on one of the trailer/towing web sites. My personal concern would be that eventualy one of these vehicles fitted with a bar across the front will be involved in an accident where there is a serious injury, I wonder how long an
insurance company will stick around when it transpires that the vehicle is not legal????
As for the final point regarding the quote from the "DVLA official" if you check it out you will find that the original quote is from VOSA (the agency that deals with these matters) and it is, I believe, a deliberate misquote. I can't remember the exact wording, but the VOSA quote went:-
"
IF an 'A' frame
COULD be made to meet
ALL the necessary regulations we see no reason that it would not be legal,
HOWEVER WE (VOSA) FAIL TO SEE HOW THIS COULD EVER BE POSSIBLE"
This you will see gives the opposite message that the misqoute on the other forum gives.
I (unlike some of those with the opposing view) have nothing to personaly gain from this and I can assure you that it is not an attack on anyone, but an attempt to redress statements that I believe to be wrong. I would like to add that all the is researchable on various sites but did take many many hours, an exercise I neither have the time or the will to repeat again.
For those of you if any still awake at this point sorry for boring you but I hope you may have found some of it informative.
