Should I order my new car with a dealer fitted towbar?

QUESTION

Greetings John and crew (assumed motley),

I've only discovered your YouTubes recently and they have certainly helped put a smile on my face, and assist with channelling us in better directions in our hunt for new transport. We have a history of holding on to our cars, so avoiding those with the greatest depreciation potential was a flying start.

After a long and exhausting search (read confused by choice) we have finally settled on a Palisade as our holiday vehicle of choice for long-distance, safe, comfortable and economical touring with our friends and children.

Just a couple of questions - the spare tyre - it is supposedly a full-size spare but is it the same as the four operating wheels to allow tyre rotation?

I will get a tow bar fitted although I have no immediate plans to tow anything specific other than trailers. Is it better to lump the tow bar fitting in with the purchase, or go to aftermarket sources?

I have two possible trade-in vehicles. The preferred one is my wife's 1997 Mitsubishi Lancer 1.6L coupe (licenced and in red to make it go faster and only 110,000km on the clock) and while I suspect there will be laughter all around, it is a convenient way to move this little rust bucket out of my driveway! The alternate is my 2008 built, 2009 delivery Subaru Outback Ltd with 170,000km on the clock which is our daily drive and still a great vehicle.

We will be cash buyers.

I look forward to hearing from you and seeing what sort of deal we can do - spending money in this quantity is going to be traumatic, so hoping you can ease the pain at least a little.

Regards,

Ian

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ANSWER

Hello Ian,

Thank you for your very kind words and your Palisade enquiry - I understand all of the points you made. It’s a good choice for this application in my view.

It is a full-sized spare, but I would refrain from including it in the tyre rotation. It’s just a bad idea. Keep the spare as the spare and you won’t have to worry about throwing the tyre pressure monitoring system out of whack (spares on modern cars typically don’t have a TPMS transponder in them). There’s no real advantage in including the spare in the rotation. If there is, it’s trivial.

Get the genuine towbar fitted by the dealer - it needs to plug into the CAN bus (like, the car’s computer network). This will unlock some features (such as the towball docking view on the reverse camera, and disable the reversing sensors, and enable the trailer anti-sway system in the ESC). If the dealer fits the genuine one it will be fully integrable with the car.

We’ll do what we can with either trade-in. A 24yo Lancer is, however, a bit of a ’sympathy’ trade-in, as you suggest, and a 12yo Outback nearing the end of its life is also not that valuable. (I know they’re probably both good cars, to you, but unfortunately how one feels about them doesn’t really impact their market value. We’ll do our best there.)

Cash is fine - understand it’s a large sum to be splashing. (You should also look at Santa Fe - very good and more affordable.) We’ll call you to discuss price and availability.

Sincerely,

John Cadogan

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