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True, but the reason in the US is different is because of laws.
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Something interesting about a camper like in the picture in Europe, to me, is where the axle is. It looks much more centered than the campers I see in the US and I have no idea why. The way the axle is in the picture certainly reduces tongue weight on the car. I wonder if the trade off is less stability at high speed? Genuinely curious!
The typical tongue loading for a traditional trailer like that is 10%. If you start getting too light it will start swerving from side to side at higher speeds and can lead to a jack knife accident from the tail wagging the dog. Most likely the trailer has heavy stuff designed into the front.
In the US, in Europe trailers are much more balanced however the speed limit for trailers is lower.
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My camping setup fits in some boxes I have on my 650cc motorcycle. Don't even need to tow anything.
The question isn't "can you", but "should you".
An engine that's always working at near it's maximum capacity will fail long before an engine that's working at a quarter of it's capacity. Most people wouldn't dream of constantly running their engine bouncing off the red line of rev limiter. The same applies to towing; if you frequently tow large, heavy loads (for instance, earth moving equipment), you want to get a vehicle that's rated for much higher tonnage than the weight you'll regularly be towing. Given that campers are usually very light weight (but only slightly more aerodynamic than a brick), you can get away with towing on in a car infrequently. You should probably not do it daily.
You may also find that it's less fuel efficient to tow a heavy load in a small-ish car than the same load in a light truck.
(BTW - I'm generally opposed to taking vacations in this way. I prefer my vacations on a motorcycle, or on foot with a backpack. I'm not currently in the kind of shape I would need to be in in order to do bicycle camping.)
Edit: I don't have a truck. It's cheaper for me to rent one on the rare occasions that I need one than it is to buy one and deal with the associated costs of owenership. That said, the Home Depot rental trucks suck, because they're solely RWD, and they have no grip on my road unless there's a literal ton of weight in the back.
I live in a country where everyone buys used cars from western Europe and it's semi-common knowledge among car people that you should avoid Dutch cars with tow hitches (and the used car yards that bring their cars from Holland tend to have the worst reputation).
That said, if you only tow heavy loads maybe a thousand, tow thousand kilometers a year, it doesn't really matter. It's prolonged heavy towing that kills the small car.
Anyway, my midsize diesel car can tow way more than I personally am legally allowed to and I prefer throwing a tent in the trunk to towing a camper, so my car sees maybe <500 km of light-weight towing a year and under a metric ton you can barely feel the hit to fuel efficiency or performance (because diesel torque is ridiculous)
(for instance, earth moving equipment)
That's quite some reach.
Any time I've needed an earth mover, it was always delivered? Who's out there picking up a earth movers themselves?
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The excuse for buying these compensators is they need them to tow. And yet I've rarely seen one ever used to tow. I saw this juxtaposition in my local area:
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You can tow with anything. The question becomes, how long can you tow with it. If I'm buying a car and it has a hitch on it, I'm not buying that one unless it just had a transmission put in it or I got it cheap enough that I can put a new transmission in it.
‘What Dutch people do on vacantion’ using a French car for the picture.
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I have no issues towing my caravan - although I tend to keep to 80kph and pull over if I see someone behind me. The caravan does have electric brakes though, weights 800kg unladen.