Behind the Scenes of the World’s Toughest Towing Test: Ike Gauntlet and Gold Hitch (Video)

The 2018 edition of the Gold Hitch competition is in full swing. The Gold Hitch awards are all about testing and crowning the best towing and off-road trucks in the land. The Ike Gauntlet™ – world’s toughest towing test, and the Cliffhanger 2.0 off-road trail are the ways we compare trucks and full-size SUVs.

This 2018 model year competition is focused on the following four categories.

  • 2018 Best Towing SUV
  • 2018 Best Towing HD Truck
  • 2018 Best Off-road Truck
  • 2018 Gold Hitch Truck of the Year

The SUV categories include the following all-new or updated full-size 2018 SUVs: Chevy Tahoe RST, Dodge Durango SRT, Ford Expedition, GMC Yukon, Infiniti QX80, and Toyota Sequoia. The competition is getting tougher, the towing limits are getting higher, but the Ike Gauntlet™ will narrow down the best towing SUV.

The best towing HD trucks focus on the three-quarter ton trucks this year. We are testing the Ford, GM, and Ram turbo-diesel trucks this year, since we focused on the big dually trucks last year.

The off-road category of trucks is still full of excitement because we got the opportunity to put the Chevy Colorado ZR2 through the paces on road and on the hard Cliffhanger 2.0 trail.

We will publish more data and details about the towing results once we complete our testing in March of this year.

How come we are not testing the half-ton trucks in 2018? There are not enough new half-ton trucks for the 2018 model year. Yes, the F-150 has been updated and the F-150 diesel is coming soon. We will of course test as many trucks as possible, but we will just not award the best half-ton this year. You can be sure that 2019 will be very much focused on the half-ton truck segment, as all-new 2019 Chevy Silverado 1500 and Ram 1500 join the fight.

The TFLtruck team will review all of the test data, vote on the winners, and crown the best trucks and SUVs of 2018 to coincide with the 2018 Denver Auto Show on April 4th, 2018.

Join the “unwrapping” of the 2018 Ford Expedition in the video below.