Does anyone have experience of towing a 540 with a Skoda Octavia estate 1.5 tsi. We currently have triton 420 and the match is perfect in so many ways, but want to upgrade to a 540 with the same car. the “ real world “ weights ( preferentially loaded car… all heavy items including spare caravan wheel/tyre in the boot and a very lightly loaded eriba , add up to sensible 85% limits but many online calculators from reputable sources, inject caution as seem to focus on unloaded kerb weights for car and weights for fully loaded caravans, which doesn’t make sense to me. I have read somewhere that the low profile of eriba touring feels more like a 70-75 % weight ratio towing experience anyway.The 150 BPH should be adequate as well..any thoughts, feedback , expertise and experience would be greatly appreciated…. And hopefully might avoid me having to buy a heavier car than we really need. Many thanks……

I tow a 530 with a Skoda |Karoq 1.5 TSI and it tows easily no problems at all. On motorway driving I have to take care to stay at the towing speed.
the car coped very well with hills.

Don't get hung up on %ages. The 85% recommendation was introduced decades ago when kerbweight i.e empty weight of a car was about all the data that was published and it was meant as a guide for those buying cars or caravans, not as an instruction for all of caravanning life. What's often forgotten is that the recommendation goes on to say 'up to 100% is fine for experienced towers'.
One other point to bear in mind is that 'kerbweight' isn't a formally defined weight and is often misused or defined differently by different organisations.
Skoda themselves list a vehicles minimum kwrbweight as a range of weights, which is daft as there can be only one minimum for a particular model/trim. Often websites quote the very lowest of the weights for a model and the reality may be substantially more for a particular car. The Certificate of Compliance of my car says it weighed 190kg more than the minimum when it left the factory. So it's actual kerbweight is 190kg more than sites list.
Then again there's no allowance for loading a car. It makes no sense that an empty car at 85% is safe and that the same model with a smaller/lighter engine and drive train but loaded with enough stuff to bring it to the same weight is adjudged not to be safe, it ain't logical.

Be guided by the car makers towing limit and if you like stay 100kg or more under and it'll be fine.
Our last car was a 1.5 petrol Karoq and it pulled our van at 1450kgish just fine.

Many thanks for your helpful replies which mirror my thoughts. I appreciate your confirmation that the 1.5tsi engine would be very adequate which is what we certainly find, pulling our triton.
To clarify the weight issues , which was my predominant concern, I visited a local weighbridge…empty car, 95% fuel > 1360 kg……..so adding in75 kg for driver weight>1435 kg which is more than I was expecting (the octavia isn’t a ridiculously “ light tow car” after all )…… and reassuring for towing the troll, especially given that we would add in the heavier items into the car…