Curt Trailer Hitch any opinions?

[Ascinder]

I don't know which Curt hitch you are using, but mine came powdercoated and so far exhibits absolutely no signs of rust. You do lose a wee bit of departure angle with the hitch, but as etlsport mentioned, I'd rather mess up a replaceable hitch than my hard to get cladding. If you do the install yourself, you will have to take off the rear cladding and there is about a 99% chance you are going to have to open up some already existing holes inside the rear frame area to get the hardware for the hitch installed. It is a little troublesome. I bought mine from etrailer.com for 164.95 with $0.99 shipping. You have probably looked at the one Tone carries as well which is really cool because it goes inside the rear cladding and sits up a little higher, therefore giving you back that departure angle and being stealthy to boot. It really matters what you are going to do with it. There are pros and cons of both methods, but personally, if you plan on doing any lifting, you gain the departure angle right back if going with a Curt hitch, and you don't have to cut up your cladding IMHO.

[Raque Thomas]

I would check out Tone's hitch if I were you. The only down side to his hitch is that you have to remove the cladding to install it. Sounds like you have to do that with the Curt model as well - so the down side is equal. On the plus side, the hitch from Tone looks factory and doesn't hang down. I've seen pictures of the Curt/U-haul model, and they don't do anything for the looks of the VX. As far as cutting the cladding, once you reinstall it over the hitch you can't tell that it was cut. The cut out area is very small.