@Jessey thats a good shout, it could be the brakes coming on and def worth ruling out but in all honesty, sorry to disagree with you but it’s more likely to be the car. The brakes weren’t coming on on our trailer or caravan and our RAV just couldn’t push it back without smoking the clutch. We also have a small box trailer that we use for camping and the clutch always smelled pushing that back up our drive which was on an incline. We also - and this is a right old tale of woe
- bought a BRAND NEW toyota hilux 3 years ago. We had an older one and had no issues with it whatsoever, I towed the length of the country with it. The last trip I did with it was up to John O Groats and over to Orkney and back, I had to reverse the stock trailer up hill and then down an S bend to get onto the ferry, the most tricky manoeuvre Ive ever done and the old hilux was grand. We replaced it with a brand new one and boom, smoking clutch as soon as I reversed the trailer up a slight incline. So we did all the checks, checked the brakes weren’t coming on on the trailer etc. Very very long story short there was an issue with the clutches on that batch of cars and the clutch was replaced at 4000 miles with promises the problem would be solved. It wasn’t
We ended up getting rid of it and cutting our losses and got a Defender, immediately no issue whatsover. We have an Isuzu Dmax and again no issue, I hate car shopping so thats it now hopefully!