Toyota Fortuner 2017 Tow Test

Toyota Fortuner Crusade
Tow Test

Most vehicles used for towing these days are four-wheel drives, and with their grunty turbo-diesel engines, we can see why. One of the relative newcomers is the Toyota Fortuner which we hitched up to a mid-sized van for a week on Victoria’s Shipwreck Coast.

I reckon that there’s no better way to do a tow test than to tow your own van. Yes folks, the van you see in the photos is mine. I haven’t had it very long but I’ve done a few trips already and mainly tow it with my Holden Commodore SV6.

The van is an 18ft dual-axle Jayco Heritage in good condition. It’s a 2003 model and it has a tare weight of around 1565kg. The ball weight is around 200kg.

We had planned a trip to Western Victoria and then back up the Great Ocean Road stopping at Port Fairy and Warrnambool, then on to Apollo Bay – a round trip of probably 1500-1700km depending on how much sightseeing we were going to do.

Enter our Road Test Editor with the offer of a Toyota Fortuner with a towbar and trailer brake set-up, and we were in clover.

I’d driven the Fortuner before on a couple of occasions and was impressed with its comfort and performance both on and off-road, so I was pretty chuffed to have one for this trip – especially since it was the up-spec Crusade model.

The Crusade is the top of the line and offers such niceties as reversing camera, sat-nav, leather-accented upholstery, auto lights and wipers, accessory sockets in the front and rear (handy for my fridge), USB socket, climate control, and more.

For the uninitiated, the Fortuner is powered by a 2.8-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel that puts out 130kW at 3400rpm and a hefty 450Nm at a reasonably low 1400rpm; which had me keen to try out the towing ability.

The Fortuner is a seven seater which we didn’t need so I folded up the third-row seats to make use of the generous cargo area and put the aforementioned fridge and some chairs, tool kit and other sundry camping essentials in there.

So the day before setting off, I went to the place where I store my van and picked it up before packing it up and readying ourselves for the journey from Melbourne to Port Fairy – a distance of around 340km from our place on the south-east side of Melbourne via the M1 and the Hamilton Highway (B140).

Without the van, our very new Fortuner was returning an economy figure of 8.5L/100km which is pretty close to Toyota’s claimed figure of 8.0L/100km.

Strap the van on and that figure rose to 14.5L/100km for our first stint of freeway, highway and secondary roads. Following this drive I figured that we were putting a bit too much weight on the rear of the Toyota.

I usually tow my van using load levelling bars that came with the heavy-duty tow kit that I had fitted to my Holden when I bought it. The bars didn’t fit on the Toyota hitch so I couldn’t use them, but I’d suggest that owners have them fitted if you’re going to be towing any more than about 1400kg as we found that the tow ball weight sagged the Fortuner’s rear suspension to the point that we were finding the bump stops over larger bumps and potholes.

To counter this, I took everything heavy out of the back of the Fortuner and put it in the van over the axles and this helped to some degree.

That said, the Fortuner towed the van perfectly with no ill manners at all. The whole rig tracked straight and true under all conditions and speeds, although I generally kept under the speed limits and stayed at around 95km/h on the freeways.

Our test vehicle was an automatic with a six-speed box and paddle shifters. It also offers Economy and Power modes via buttons on the console which, along with the D (Drive) and S (Sport) modes in the shifter gives a good level of control in your gear selection.

I found on the winding section of the Great Ocean Road, that Power mode was preferable as it held onto the gears a bit longer and towed better. On the downhills, slipping the gear selector into ‘S’ straight away brought the gearbox back into fourth and provided a modicum of engine braking. Using the paddles, I could then bring it down further if needed and saved me standing on the brakes all the time.

Our MO for the trip was to get to a destination, drop off the van in the caravan park and drive around for a couple of days sightseeing, then pack up and move to the next destination we would use as a base.

Our section from Port Campbell to Apollo Bay saw our fuel economy average out at 14.2L/100km which was slightly better that the first towing average, no doubt from me getting more used to the gearbox and its options, and maybe because the engine was freeing up a bit too.

I found that the Fortuner offers plenty of grunt for towing our van and it didn’t struggle on the hills. Importantly, the temperature gauge didn’t move and the gearbox seemed to handle it well.

The electronics worked well too. There is plenty of info passed to the driver via the screen on the dash and the sat-nav worked well, although I found it a pain that you can’t add addresses on the move. The vehicle has to be stopped to operate the sat-nav, so your co-pilot can’t add anything while you’re driving. It’s a bit annoying to be locked out while driving and somewhat of a nanna-state move by Toyota, but that aside, it worked well.

It was certainly a comfortable vehicle for our trip. The seats are great and the suspension is a far cry from the old days of clunky four-wheel drives that rode like buck boards. The steering is great – it’s direct and not overly assisted. Vision is pretty good but my van is wide so I strapped on a pair of extension mirrors which gave me a slightly better view.

All too soon our trip was over and I had to take the van back to its storage place where the guy who owned it was keen to know what I thought: “Would you have one?” he asked. “Yeah I’d have one,” I answered. “I’d do a bit of work on the rear suspension, but I’d have one for sure.”

2017 Toyota Fortuner Crusade pricing and specifications:
Price: $61,990 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 2.8-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel
Output: 130kW/420Nm
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Fuel: 8.6L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 205g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety Rating: Five-star ANCAP