Witter Wonder

GETTING a towbar fitted is easy. Buy new car. Check. Search on internet for suitable towbar. Check. Drive to fitting centre and exchange wad of notes for shiny new towbar. Easy.

Unless, that is, you happen to have a 2008 Mazda 6 estate. Most of the fitting centres only offered a bar for the old model and many large European manufacturers merely said their unit ‘was in development’ – despite the fact that this particular car has been on sale since January 2008. Not much use when we had a caravan holiday looming.

Happily, a meeting with Witter at the NEC show was to change all this. Not only had they already developed a towbar for the vehicle, but even offered it in fixed or detachable flavours. We opted for the detachable unit – on estate cars you tend to have to reach into the boot a lot and are constantly clipping your shin on fixed units (I have the scars to prove it!)

Two weeks later we headed over to Witter’s head office at Deeside to have the unit fitted. The first surprise was that they actually make their towbars on site – it’s always refreshing to see a company that still manufactures products in the UK.

Witter’s roots can be traced back to 1950 when founder Colin Witter saw a niche in the market for easy-to-fit towbars for the growing post-war caravan market. At this time it was quite common for the local blacksmith to fabricate a towbar for your car!

Since then, the company has expanded massively to become the UK’s largest manufacturer of towbars. They supply over five million towbars a year throughout Europe, as well as offering over 250 specialist fitting centres across the UK. You can also buy them online at their website or specify a local fitting via their new ‘Web Fit’ booking service.

The manufacture of these units is a sophisticated business with each new unit being CAD-designed and then independently tested for European type approval – each towbar carries a unique code number and needs to be registered on the company website for traceability. One thing they pride themselves on is being able to supply towbars for the very latest vehicles – of which this fitment is testament.

Their premises are impressive being incredibly clean and well-ordered. Even the welding bays – an activity that is inherently messy – were operating-theatre clean. The equipment tally is impressive, too, involving CNC punches, plasma profiling machines, together with welding jigs involving 14 robotic machines and 20 manual welding stations.

The actual installation was handled by Witter’s dedicated technical expert Andy, who apologised for the ‘state’ of the workshop bay despite the fact you could have eaten your dinner off the floor. He will never catch a glimpse of my kitchen worktops, that’s for sure…

Andy is more commonly to be found answering Witter’s technical helpline and it’s clear that the company take aftersales seriously, providing back-up to both DIY fitters and professionals alike. Throughout the day Andy’s phone rang almost constantly with a stream of inquiries – all handled with unflappable calm.

The actual fitment took several hours and involved the removal of the rear bumper, most of the plastic trim in the boot and rear quarter, together with the tail-lights and trim leading to the passenger footwell. A purpose-made wiring loom was used in the interests of reliability and came complete with built-in plugs for simple connection. However, it was still a very involved fit. Non-European cars – the Mazda is made in Japan – tend to be more fiddly to wire. Looking at this fit, there is no way you would attempt it yourself – even a competent DIY-fanatic would take a whole weekend to do this fitment.

With the vehicle’s flimsy rear bumper support removed, it was reassuring to see the beefy Witter towbar bracket being bolted in place – easily the most sturdy part of the rear of the car.

The detachable ‘Quantum’ tow hitch is a modular system that can be bolted to most of the towing brackets the company make. It’s easy to attach and remove, with a nylon drawstring bag supplied for when it’s not in use. Two keys are supplied to lock it in place when in use.

With the towbar in place – and all the bolts meticulously torqued up to 95Nm – the wiring connections were finalised for the split-charge system and the caravan-sized pile of plastic trim components were refitted.

For maximum neatness, the electric socket was mounted on a rotating fixing, using a bolt, friction washers and a nylock nut. This enables the European socket to be swivelled out of the way when not in use to give an even more unobtrusive fit.

It’s worth noting that all modern towbars now come equipped with the new European-style socket (which is both neater and better engineered than the archaic British twin-socket system). All modern caravans are switching over to the new socket style and adaptors are available to connect these new sockets to the ‘old style’ electrics.

The finished results speak for themselves – see the photos – and has exceeded all our expectations. They’re fastidiously made, they fit neatly and they work well. Best of all, they’re British.

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