I'm looking to get a tow bar fitted to my 2011 Superb. I'm going to use it mainly with a bike rack.

Had a few quotes up around the £550 mark for a fitted flange tow bar with dedicated electrics. One of the quotes offered £254 with aftermarket electrics.

Is it worth the extra £200 for the dedicated electrics and what benefits does it have?

Key benefits of aftermarket are:

Deactivates the rear parking sensors when you engage reverse and displays a trailer on the Columbus (not sure about the Swing) to remind you.

Adjusts the beam pattern of the parking sensors slightly so they don't pick up the towbar (when nothing else is attached to it), meaning you can leave it in place.

Disables car rear fog light, so only the trailer board lights up - designed so the car fog light doesn't reflect off the front of a caravan and distract the driver, less useful for a bike rack.

The car's alarm will sound if anyone detaches the electrical hook up when the car is locked.

Adjusts the ESP systems to towing mode, incorporating snaking detection, again less useful for a bike rack.

I only ever use mine with a bike rack, but I like the parking sensor and alarm feaures and I have the option to tow something bigger in the future.

Cheers for that.

Don't have parking sensors but I like the alarm bit.

Going to have to have a think about this. I know what I want but my better half is not convinced.

I have a towbar with after market wiring, I was a bit disappointed at first to not have the proper electrics, to be fair I have now used mine on numerous occasions i'm not that bothered and wonder if the extra expense is worth it, the extras they do are nice but got to say I have never towed my caravan in the fog so that's not been a problem yet and for the odd occasion I'd deal with it, I have a caravan mover so don't do much reversing so sensors only occasionally a problem and normally the full boot muffles them, ( got a mover as I have a 4x4 Elegance and it cost £600 fitted compared to the quoted £1200 for a clutch and dmf! and reversing a caravan is a clutch killer) and the alarm is something I wasn't aware of but due to caravan thefts I always tow with my hitch lock in place, very rarely stop at services and these gangs who nick caravans from services are that quick if you caravan isn't locked to your car it would probably be gone before you had chance to react.

I've got the genuine Skoda electronics module but a different towbar (the Skoda OEM towbar hasn't gone through Australian Standards cert so it's not legal for use here).

It works well although I tried 3 different trailers on the weekend and the brake lights didn't work on any of them. That may be because the trailers had LED brake lights but I did get a bulb fail message on the MFD. Indicators and tails worked fine (these were also LEDs). The picture on the RNS-510 changed to one with a little trailer and overall it worked well.