Freelander to tow horse box.

[stumpage]

A colleague of mine is looking to buy a Freelander 2 2.2 TD4 Manual with 120K miles on the clock for towing a horse box (with horse). Couple of questions, will this do the job ok? also due to budget (about £8K) which would be a better bet a 100K mile plus FL2 TD4 or a lower mileage FL1 TD4?

Running costs are also an issue hence she is looking at the manual.

Don't know much about these so any advice will be welcome.

Thanks

[camel_landy]

The Freelander has a lower tow capacity than the other cars in the range. However, it should be OK to tow a horse box with 1 horse. As for the manual gearbox, it will do it but it will be heavy on clutches with the manoeuvring, etc... IMHO - Get an auto...

I'd also suggest that they might want to have a look at a Disco instead of a Freelander, if they're going to do a lot of heavy towing.

M

[A.J.M]

Manual's can be fussy buggers at times, hense for towing it's usually auto's that are prefered.
Both freeby 1 and 2 have a 2 ton towing limit, so make you will need to make sure the horse and box are under this limit.
Also that she has the right licence, if she passed after 97 and hasn't done the trailer test then she is limited to total weight of 3500kg for both car and trailer, this applies to me so with my freeby1 i can tow 1420kg even though the car can take 2000kg.

Otherwise a TD5 engined discovery would be good.

Whatever she gets, make sure it has a decent service history and if in doubt, get a full service done.