I know why you’re here

The only reason you’re searching this is because you’re thinking about towing with your Acura RDX anyway. Now, let’s be honest (and this is in no way a recommendation) your Acura will probably be alright, so long as you’re not stupid about it. 

For example, you wouldn’t tow a 7000lb boat on a Uhaul trailer attached to your Acura then floor it uphill. That would be crazy talk. However, you might get one of those small utility trailers, and use your RDX to tow around some mulch for the weekend. Maybe you’d even drive out to Des Moines Iowa to take advantage of an awesome deal on a lawnmower tractor, ever so slightly tipping the scales toward the 1500lb tow rating of your vehicle. 

This isn’t exactly what the designers recommend or guarantee, but I don’t think it’s stupid to tow within reason.

That being said, I wanted to delve into the reason for these weight ratings in the first place:

What does Towing Capacity Mean?

On every vehicle, inside the driver’s side door, there lies a little card with a bunch of numbers listed on it. They might read something like “Curb weight”, “Towing Capacity”, “Tongue Rating”, “GVWR”, and “Roof Load Rating” in every combination. 

Towing capacity is listed there because that’s with the manufacturing engineers specified when testing the limits of that vehicle. If you don’t want to get in trouble and outperform the capabilities of the vehicle, you probably shouldn’t tow more than the 1500 pound towing limit on your vehicle. That being said with 272 hp and 280 lb-ft of torque, it should be able to tow quite a bit more than 1500 pounds. 

Let me say this again for the people in the back “if you were planning on towing 1500 pounds+ regularly you’d be better off with a different vehicle...maybe a truck? 

“Max towing capacity” means the maximum weight your car is safely able to manage whether it be pulling, stopping, or maneuvering around obstacles. Yes, your Honda FIT can totally tow 4000 pounds if you get it going, but those brakes are not meant to stop that kind of weight when you need it to nor is that car’s chassis able to handle that kind of mass when you need to outmaneuver something.

Your tow rating comprises the total weight of the trailer + the weight of the thing you are towing with the trailer. Your “tongue weight” is the maximum downward force/weight that can be put on the actual trailer hitch of your vehicle. For the RDX, this value is only 150 lbs, so you’ll need to verify the specs of your trailer before going down this route, I’d think.

The reason you should pay attention to this “maximum vehicle weight rating”,  towing capacity, roof load, or anything of the sort is that the engineers that spent millions of dollars and countless hours working on this vehicle decided that these are the metrics they would feel safe building into a passenger car.

Don’t Be Stupid

I like to think of it this way:

Whenever you thinking about modifying your car whether it’s increasing the vehicle ride height or throwing some sick mud terrain tires on your daily driver or towing a full bed of rocks for just 5 miles around the block. Think about if your kids were playing baseball in the front yard and they had to run into the street to catch a fly ball. If you were driving down the road and weren’t able to move out of the way in time because you overloaded your vehicle or stupidly modified it, what then? I don’t have to, but I say this because it does happen. 

I don’t have much more to say on this topic, but people! Pay attention to the weight ratings for your vehicle, there’s probably a good reason they’re there. [see what I did? Three “theres” in one sentence ;)

Cheers,

Al