and i hope this is a joke.  being a little bit of a drama queen, are we not?

drama queen? Are we trying to be a sarcasically silly king?

seemed like a valid question to me.  was yours a joke?

uh....i know which post you were refering to.  perhaps my post was not clear. my question to you was, do you actually think an alero unfit to pull a lawnmower?

and i would be curious as to the trailer rating of the aformentioned alero. im guessing the generic 1000# uni-body car rating???? or possibly has a disclaimer about not towing at all.

sounds like a fine project to me, be sure to get pictures.  and dont forget the "surge" brakes, in keeping with the brenderup theme.

saw a toyota echo with a little trailer with 4 rolling trash cans strapped neatly together, scooting down the interstate the other day.

I am a fan of the Brenderup trailers and approach they take, and do think there is a need for more lightweight easy to tow trailers.

With that said, I just don't think it is wise for Brenderup to claim what the minimum tow vehicle requirements are. Their numbers clearly allow for unsafe setups and they are setting themselves up for a big lawsuit.

According to their numbers (93in WB and 125hp), you could pull their Baron trailer and two horses with a new Honda Civic sedan. I'm sure the Civic would pull it, but it clearly wouldn't be entirely safe out on the highways. There is a reason Honda has the Max. tow rating MUCH MUCH lower.

I do think you can get away with less "big truck" with their trailers, but I still believe that you can't exceed the tow vehicles ratings. I'm pretty sure the law is with me here as well. Not all 93in 125hp vehicles are created equal.

-Flush

These are good points as you don't want to exceed the auto manufactures tow ratings or the hitch manufactures tow ratings. If a reciever hitch comes with the new vehicle as part of a factory tow package, then the towing capacity rating of the vehicle set by it's manufacture has priority over the hitch companies ratings. Usually the vehicle manufactures rating is the same or less than the hitch manufacture as in a factory install, the hitch is now part of the vehicle. This is the same for tires, factory installed tires fall under the guidelines set by the vehicle manufacture, taking priority over what it says on the tire.

 Most automatic transmissions will need an external oil cooler to do much towing and in smaller vehicles with manual transmissions will have about 1/2 the towing capacity of an automatic. As always you want to look at the whole picture to make towing decisions.