2014 Kia Forte EX Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds.com

2014 Kia Forte EX Long-Term Road Test

Can you flat-tow a 2014 Kia Forte sedan behind a motorhome with four wheels down? Dinghy towing is the preferred method of RV travelers that want to bring a runabout vehicle with them.

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greenpony

I didn't think you were supposed to tow ANY vehicle like except in an emergency.

dang8_

Simple: The vehicle being towed by the pictured RV is a 2008-2012 Chevrolet Malibu, and more specifically, a vehicle in LS trim, as indicated by the wheels.

dang8_

Correction: The vehicle is only a 2012 model year if it is a "Malibu Classic."

gslippy

I'm curious - what vehicles CAN be towed with 4 wheels on the ground? I can see mfrs prohibiting this so they don't get warranty claims for damaged steering, tire complaints, and transmission damage.

socal_eric

Not a lot but there are a few with most of them being manual transmission vehicles. The slice of RV owners among the general population is pretty small and those that tow an around-town vehicle being their RV even smaller, but as a suggestion, if you're going to do an article and what seems to be a running series (that kind of seems like content filler) why not spend the couple minutes to contact the manufacturer for clarification rather than stating the obvious in that the owner's manual doesn't give enough information if the manual trans cars can be towed this way. That might help the rare visitor to the site searching for this information more than reiterating "the owner's manual does say".

socal_eric

"...doesn't say" ------darn poor comments system, no editing, and no paragraph breaks.

actualsize

Dinghy towing is something that most manufacturers directly address in their owner's manuals because the RV towing segment isn't as small as you'd think. Snowbirds descend from the north to warmer climates every winter in great numbers with rigs like this. The town of Quartzsite, Az, population 4,000, temporarily baloons to the third largest city in Arizona (behind Phoenix and Tucson) in January and February as the Snowbirds come rolling in and set up camp for a week or two. Some 1.5 million of them come here during those months, though not all on the same week. A large fraction of those come in motorhomes towing a dinghy vehicle. Other desert areas have temporary population growth, too. I lived in such an area in Arizona for several years and the influx was staggering. I would see dozens of such rigs rolling through town on any given winter day, and I wasn't in a particularly popular spot. It's a retiree thing, mostly, and the number of retirement-age baby boomers is continuing to rise. If anything, we could see MORE cars being towed in this way than we did in the past. An engineer friend at a tow-bar company once told me the original Saturn SL1 could trace a double-digit percentage of total new-car sales to motorhome towing folks because it was heavily advertised in motorhome magazines to be towable when equipped with an automatic, a huge plus for this crowd. He certainly sold a ton of Saturn tow bars. The above Malibu continues that tradition. Imports aren't as common, though (but not unheard of). It tends to be a buy-american crowd, but it's also true that some import manufacturers, particularly those from Asia, don't "get" dinghy towing at all because it's just not done in their home markets. I can't count how many "why would anyone want to do that?" conversations I've had with Japanese and Korean engineers in past jobs.

actualsize

@gsslippy: most true manuals, many 4x4s with a transfer case (manual or automatic - put the transfer case in Neutral and the transmission in Park, usually [but check the manual first]), less than a third of true automatics, zero DCT- and CVT-equipped cars