tow vehicle vs towED vehicle... round 1, FIGHT !

Yeah, yeah, I was on my lunch break.

Here you go:

Shoreline, Washington, to Thunderhill Raceway and back.  Total distance 1400 miles.  Fun!

The race car only covered ten laps on Saturday before the engine seized, then two more the next day before blowing up, but at least the towing went well.

The Siskiyous really are quite scenic at low speeds.

Yeah, I hate to be the squidward of the party but at some point a line does have to be drawn between "doing funny and interesting shit in a controlled environment" and "endangering the public." I think that tow bar may have crossed into the latter category.

I needed the car home...
Had an option and took it...
No one remembers except when I bring it up...
No one was hurt...

A quote from TheEngineer "you have a lot of confidence for someone looking to play with chrysler parts."
A professionals quote "so what if that comma in the price tag of your rig is in the same spot the period is on mine, I STILL beat you "

Nothing wrong with that you couldn't cure with some Air Lift helper bags (though how you'd adapt them to an independent strut based rear is up to you). Or maybe just a weight distributing hitch.

I don't have any pictures of it but when I was young and stupid I flat towed a 72 Nova from Chicago to 60 miles north of Green Bay for a demolition derby with my 74 Datsun mini pickup that was loaded with all my tools. She was hard to get rolling but once she was it was a nice straight drive until you tried to stop all that weight. Probably some of the scariest moments of my life.

Ratings in general are for those that lack imagination.

One exception is for something is being suspended over your head. I prefer less imagination there.

Sort of.  The question is, how comfortable are you towing at 55 MPH, replacing transmissions using creative engineering to solve problems.  I am not even being sarcastic.

1976 Volvo 244, M45 tranny, B21F (max 91 hp) and 3:73 rear end.  Towed a 1000# trailer with THREE UJM's on it s a total of over 3000# (within the rated towing) but with at least a 600# tongue (double the rating).  Wind resistance off the chart, tongue length of about 6".  No trailer brakes.  Towed just fine.  0-60 MPh about 45 seconds.  60-braking distance about 4 miles.  Averaged almost 18 mpg in spite of all that.

The Pilot, if it existed in England, would probably have a tow rating of like 10,000#'s...at 50 mph.  I know the first gen Trooper with the 72 hp, NA diesel had a rating of 8,000#'s and it i only weighed like 3600#'s.

Yep...completely agree.  That being said, I also believe that if you were willing to stick to those requirements, said vehicles would tow those loads...even to Tehran...if maintained properly.  The truth is that we are unwilling to live our lives that way hence our tow vehicles that can tow things at 70 MPH for 4 hours (max bathroom interval before resorting to a gatorade bottle) at a time until we reach Dakar...or Orlando.

No kidding.  In 2010 I used my MG Metro to tow my KV Mini 1 from Seattle to Chicago and back for The Micro/Mini Car World Meet, with my father along for the ride:

A guy who had flown from England to attend the show asked me to give his countrymen a hard time for using my British car to do this, inasmuch as for their own meets they had difficulty convincing people to travel even 100 miles.  I obliged by pointing out that Seattle-Chicago-Seattle was roughly equivalent to Birmingham-Istanbul-Birmingham, but with real mountains in the way and no assistance from a Chunnel.

Reactions were... mixed.

Actually one vehicle I passed up because I figured it would be at the limit was the Nissan Xterra 4x4. Having the ability to tow a race car or go offroading would be nice. The problem is that it is rated at 5k towing which I figured would be pushing it.