WTF should I buy (A consolidated list of bad decisions)

[Jake]

More thoughts:

I towed my enclosed over Afton Mountain to JMU with an F150 EcoBoost XLT (cloth seats the horror oh save me jesus) and it was uh... fine? The EcoBoost with your foot hard down drinks fuel like we all did Natty Light at JMU but it was more than enough truck to pull 6500-7k lbs and the aero effects that come with an enclosed.



For features that I consider "must haves" for towing:

• Backup camera - federally mandated at this point so whatever
  
• Integrated trailer brake controller - these tie in so much nicer with truck brakes than an aftermarket unit
  
• Decent sound system - obviously
  
• Comfortable seats - material is less important than comfort, but cloth vs leather often are different levels of comfy, plus leather may mean more adjustability for lumbar etc. I like leather for ease of cleaning, too. 
  
• Headlights - I'd love to know where Adam is finding a $50 Xenon kit that fits properly, outputs more light than OEM halogens and can be aimed correctly. The halogen low-beam projectors on my '16 Ram relatively suck but to do anything "right" with HID or LED is close to $400 at minimum. My highs are good so it's fine on back roads for now.
  

The 360° camera setups are nice but like... eh? Just don't drive nose-first into anything and if you're unsure what's ahead of you, stop and get out. I had a 360 cam on my red Ford and it was nice but not a game-changer.

Ford and Ram both have really good trailer blind-spot monitoring. Ford added this in 2018 and Ram for MY2020. The truck can monitor blind spots for a trailer up to 33' long behind you. Really slick and especially nice with an enclosed at night. Ford's "Pro Trailer Backup Assist" is slow and useless if you've backed up a trailer more than twice. Ram doesn't have much towing tech but they nail the basics really well.

Ram does have the 12" UConnect screen as an option, "lower" trim trucks get an 8" screen with all the same functionality. I don't think the 12" screen is used well enough to be worth the cost unless you really want to stunt on everyone else at the track. UConnect remains one of the best setups on the market for infotainment.

And yeah, re: Titan... it just left me cold. I looked at brand-new ones and the dealership was like "yeah there's no incentives on these" and they were asking stupid money for a brand-new base truck compared to any domestic brand. That plus the fact that they look like a Wish.com clone of an older F-150 and I walked.

It has to be said that a modern half-ton truck is more capable in every way than a 15-20 year old 2500-series. I don't feel like my enclosed is being pulled behind "just enough" of a truck with a 1500-series from any brand. It towed well behind Taylor's 2011 F-150, even, and that's "old" compared to what's on sale now.

I have also pulled it behind a Ram 2500 w/Cummins and while it pulled incredibly well – mostly due to all that turbodiesel torque at like 7 rpm – it felt a little silly to use such a huge truck for that trailer. A 28' enclosed, absolutely. But buying a 2500/3500 to tow a Civic in a reasonable-sized enclosed seems a bit excessive unless you want a huge trailer or to say you've got a big bad diesel. This truck was positively badass (and expensive, this was a loaded Laramie) but maintenance and ownership costs of a diesel are hard to justify vs a gasoline-powered truck unless you're doing an assload of miles per year.