Wanting a towbar fitted to Mrs DB's car for towbar mounted rack. However they are going to have to cut a hole in the back panel below the bumper to fit it, but I can get a detachable one with a panel to cover this hole.
Has anyone else had this done to a Passat or for that matter any other car? Does the hole look gash? Does the panel look like a piece of carp?
And on price - I've been quoted £379 + VAT for a detachable one. Or £232 + VAT for a permanent one but Mrs DB not wanting a permanent towbar on her car. Do those prices sound like par for the course?
I cut a hole in mine for a towbar. It doesn't look bad because there's a towbar in it!
I wouldn't have minded a removeable one though although they were another 200 quid or something silly. AFAIK there are removeable ones that do not require bumper cutting. They do look like a penis though.
Reasonable prices but you might get cheaper. Try www.towbarexpress.co.uk, they were excellent to me.
Would 100% recommend the detachable option. It is a joy to use, but not to fit. I bought a Westfalia (makers of the OEM Audi towbars as supplied by a dealer) detachable one for my A4 in the end after a lot of research and fitted it myself. The bumper cut out is right underneath where the bumper turns back under towards the front of the car, so from the back you can't see it at all, unless you're lying on the floor. However, whether this will be the same for the Passat all depends on the shape/design of your bumper. The cut out was easy enough with a very sharpSstanley knife and a steady hand, using a £2 coin as a template to get nicely radiused corners to it.
My advice - the fitting is easy enough if you are used to working on cars, but very very very time consuming and involves pretty much dismantling the entire back end of your car, inside and out, wheels off, wheelarch liners out, exhaust dropped down for access etc etc. Took me three days and I haven't even done the electrics yet!
Mine's from here: [url= http://www.pfjones.co.uk/ ]pfjones[/url]
Molgrips +1: They do look like some king of terrifying dildo when detached!
Btw I have a 2006 Passat and the fitting was a piece of cake. All I had to do was remove the bumper (hardest bit, had to be really careful with it), then unbolt this large metal bar across the back, remove and re-fit with another large metal bar with a towbar attached. Mark out and cut hole in bumper (as above, it's very very low down anyway) refit bumper, job done.
However I didn't do the electrics because I wanted the full electronic ECU integration which I couldn't do myself.
I had a detachable fitted to my 2006 passat. From memory it was a Westfalia and had a little blanking plate to cover the hole in the lower valance when the towbar was removed. The electrics swung down on a little arm. Yes it was about £100 more than the next best option, but figured as I had just spent 20k on a car, the little extra was worth it. In the 4 years or so I had the car, it woked perfectly without any maintenance. - The little blanking plate probably keeps a lot of crap out of the fixing.
Thanks for the replies all - managed to get to see one in the flesh yesterday and the detachable seems to be the way to go. Just need to get the £400 now!