On 1/27/2021, Johan Goudsmit in the Netherlands wrote:
"Whatever you do to hook on the car from underneath, if you want to pull it on a trailer chances are you damage the front valance. The challenge is to make a towing point under the bumper. I included some pictures to show what I came up with. When driving, you can drop this thing in the boot and mount it with one spanner when needed. -- Regards, Johan



That's a rather large chunk of hardware to be hauling around in the boot forever, on the chance that you might have a use for it every 100,000 miles or so. Maybe if you were going racing and expected to be towed out of a sand pit every few weeks? But then you would have to install it before the race, before getting sunk in the sand.

How often do you expect to winch the car onto a flatbed truck or trailer? It looks good for an occasional slow pull in a straight line with a rope or cable. Maybe it should normally live in the tow vehicle, not to be always carried in the trunk of the car.

There is another issue. The valance panel is pretty close to the ground, such that it will often drag on a parking curb. Your tow bar will be even lower. With a flat bed tow truck this tow bar will hang below the front valance panel and considerably forward. It is likely to hang up on the tilted flat bed before the car tires get to the ramp. Maybe not a problem with a low trailer using individual track ramps for the tires, where the tow bar may fit between the ramps and be high enough to clear the trailer tail before it gets that far forward.

When we were towing a stock car on a flat bed trailer, we would put the trailer tongue jack down and lift the front of the trailer to some significant angle. Keep the tow vehicle attached (raising the tail of the tow vehicle at the same time) to prevent trailer tipping backward. This trailer bed tilt lowers the tail of the trailer and decreases the angle of attach for the separate ramps. It also reduces the crest angle between ramps and trailer bed so it doesn't drag the exhaust pipe when passing over the crest.

Suggest you configure your tow bar to pass forward within 1/4-inch of the valance panel, then bend upward at the point exactly where it passes under the lip of the valance panel, so the towing eye will be higher (under the front bumper). Place a large sheet of cardboard under the front of the car, touching the contact point of tires on the ground. Lift the front end of the cardboard until it touches the valance panel, or the bumper overriders, or in your case touching the tow bar. This will give you the required angle of bend for the front end of the tow bar, so it would first hit the bend in the square tube (below the valance panel) without hitting the front eye. Then maybe we don't care if the tow bar might drag on the ramp a bit (protecting the valance panel). -- Barney