There have been rumblings of Volkswagen promoting a pickup in America for bit now, as a result of in the event you’re an automaker and also you take a look on the American market, it certain looks like even the weakest pickup truck effort may get in on the insatiable American urge for food for pickup vans. Effectively, you may assume, anyway, as a result of go ask Nissan how promoting the Titan goes. That’s, maybe, Volkswagen’s worry, too, in not providing a pickup for America, in that promoting no pickup is likely to be higher than promoting a mediocre slow-selling pickup.
Studying between the strains, that’s what I’ve surmised a minimum of from feedback made by VW executives this week in Los Angeles, who have been there for a present that featured autos. Automotive Information was there, too, together with a “small group of journalists” to speak with Thomas Schäfer, a worldwide Volkswagen govt, a couple of doable VW pickup primarily based on the platform being developed for Scout. Schäfer delivered some actual speak.
“In the meanwhile, our deal with the lineup doesn’t embrace it,” Schäfer, who began his new job three months in the past, informed a small group of journalists at an off-site roundtable dialogue earlier than the Los Angeles Auto Present. “In the meanwhile, we now have a transparent lineup all through the second half of this decade. Then once more, within the American market, in the event you don’t play in sure segments, then it’s a must to keep in a sure market share space. However the query of [VW’s new Rugged SUV platform] isn’t our precedence in the intervening time.”
Auto Information additionally quotes Pablo Di Si, who’s the boss of VW in North America, who feels like a man who’s positively begging company to promote a pickup right here.
Di Si, who headed up VW’s Latin American area earlier than taking on North America on Sept. 1, spoke lovingly concerning the Tarok, the Latin America-developed compact unibody pickup idea proven on the 2019 New York auto present. The budget-friendly idea took benefit of VW’s international platform technique to basically use the elements bin to craft a Tiguan-sized all-wheel-drive pickup with a transformable mattress completely fitted to surfers in Brazil to hold their boards, Di Si defined.
“That was my child,” Di Si informed Automotive Information. He stated in his early conferences with VW sellers within the U.S., the Tarok has come up as a risk for the market. “It’s on us. I maintain VW, and we now have an enormous and nice portfolio of SUVs,” he stated. “There’s no pickup right here — but. However time will inform. I feel we now have the data. I feel the phase is related. And we’re going to play the sport and see the place that sort of takes us.”
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The folks in Wolfsburg who truly make these choices in all probability discover all of this very cute, although Di Si can be preemptively establishing a handy excuse for the following time he wants to clarify to his bosses why VW gross sales in America are down. We may actually use a truck to promote right here, he’ll say, and everybody will nod solemnly. VW sellers, too, will say that they certain may use a pickup to promote, and everybody will ignore them, as a result of they’re sellers. Does the American truck shopping for public truly need a VW pickup? We’ll discover out someday, years from now. Or we received’t!
