I'm impressed that there don't seem to be complaints on the lack of power while towing. I had four passengers (plus me driving) in the HR-V once and I had to floor it and shift at redline to accelerate at a normal cadence. We aren't/weren't football players either; maybe 140lbs each.
I installed the hitch but haven't towed anything yet, I did drive it today very loaded, the heaviest I have ever driven it, had a heavy ceramic top table and a bunch of chairs that made the car quite heavy, it was as expected very slow to accelerate on the highway. I figured I would drive on sport mode since it keeps the RPM's higher before switching and it seemed better.
A couple of times I had a very strange "error" on the CVT which seemed to rev very high even when I let the foot of the gas. I switched it to regular driving for a second and the revolutions decreased, but it was a bit scary