Volkswagen says its second-generation ute and the new Ford Ranger will be a match made in heaven
- Gruntier V6 to dominate
- Cheaper variants to come
- How long will you wait?
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When the all-new Volkswagen Amarok arrives in Australia from early 2023 it will continue to be the best handling ute on the market, this time thanks to the new Ford Ranger on which it’s based.
That’s according to Volkswagen Australia commercial vehicles director Ryan Davies, who confirmed the bigger, safer and more advanced new Amarok will again be available with V6 and four-cylinder turbo-diesel engines Down Under, where supplies will be tight and both single-cab and cab/chassis models remain under consideration.
Now confirmed to touch down in local showrooms from around February 2023 after its worldwide premiere on July 7, the second-generation Amarok will be Volkswagen Group Australia’s biggest selling model – as it was for the first time in 2021 due to slow supplies of the new VW Golf.
More than 84,000 Amarok utes have been sold here since its local launch in 2011, making Australia the second biggest market for Volkswagen’s first global ute, which has found more than 830,000 customers in Europe, South America, South Africa and Oceania (including Australia) since 2010.
But when the new model arrives, the German car-maker expects Australians to buy more Amaroks than any other nationality, leapfrogging Argentinians.
That’s in part because Volkswagen expects more sales of its high-tech new model in a booming ute market Down Under, and because an updated version of the current model will continue to be built in Argentina for South America, while South Africa becomes the sole source of the new Amarok.
Meantime, the new Ford Ranger, the global mid-size pick-up that spawned the MkII VW Amarok, will again be produced in South Africa, South America, Vietnam, the US and (for Australia) Thailand.
While Thai production of the new Ranger has just commenced and the first new Amaroks will come off the line in Silverton late this year, Volkswagen created its own exterior design and its engineers worked hand in hand with Ford’s Australian-based development team for the third-generation T6 platform.
“We’ve had a team of 20-odd people in Australia for over two years working closely with our partners to make sure we get the best of both worlds,” Davies told carsales at the launch of the Walkinshaw-developed 2022 VW Amarok W580X tough-truck, which will likely be replaced by a new-generation locally-engineered sequel by 2025.
“The two benchmarks of the segment coming together to form one ute – that’s going to knock it out of the park,” he said.
“You can even see with what you’ve seen from the [new] Ranger, a lot of inspiration has come from the Amarok and the fact is we’ve always been and will continue to be the best driving and road handling ute on the market.
“You can see why that’s got so much potential as a collaboration. We’re really excited to bring it to Australia.”
Gruntier V6 to dominate
While V6 diesel models will continue to be the most popular powertrain (V6 currently accounts for more than 90 per cent of Amarok sales) Davies says there is still room for four-pot oilers in the new 2023 Volkswagen Amarok line-up.
“We definitely think there’s merit to bringing in a four-cylinder as well as a V6, but we still think the V6 will take the lion’s share of the sales,” he said.
“The current Amarok has been done very well at the premium end and we think we can have a broader customer base with this vehicle, certainly with the specs and safety equipment we’ll have in this new car.
“We’ll appeal to a broader range of people,” he said, hinting that pricing could be surprisingly sharp as per the new Ford Ranger.
But instead of Volkswagen’s own 2.0-litre and 3.0-litre diesel engines, the new Amarok will adopt Ford engines of the same capacity, matched to Ford’s 10-speed automatic transmission, as seen in the new Ranger, although it’s unclear whether it will inherit both the single-turbo ‘2.0L SiT’ engine and the twin-turbo ‘2.0L BiT’ engine, which commands a $2500 price premium in the Ranger. The high-output 2.0-litre diesel will up peak torque to 500Nm, from 400 and 420Nm in the current Amarok.
The new Amarok V6, meantime, will share its new 3.0-litre turbo-diesel V6 with selected Ranger variants, in which it produces 184kW/600Nm. That’s more torque than the outgoing Amarok V6 offers (up to 580Nm), but less power (up to 190kW, or 200kW on overboost).
Cheaper variants to come
Volkswagen has already confirmed five new model variants of the new Amarok globally, but local pricing and specifications are yet to be announced. That hasn’t stopped eager Aussies from securing their place at the front of the queue, with dealers already taking orders ahead of the 2023 Amarok’s local arrival.
This comes on top of what Volkswagen says is the biggest order bank it’s ever had for the current Amarok, stocks of which are expected to be depleted by November 2022.
As with the original Amrok, four-door ‘DoubleCab’ and two-door ‘SingleCab’ body styles will be produced, but Volkswagen Australia will again focus on the booming dual-cab 4×4 sector Down Under, where the single-cab Amarok was discontinued long ago due to low demand.
While Amarok buyers traditionally spend more on their utes, Volkswagen hasn’t ruled out cheaper, entry-level single-cab and cab-chassis models to flesh out the Amarok range.
“Yes they’re being considered. Whilst they’ll be available they’re not typically the space we’ve owned,” said Davies.
The current Amarok is bereft of any meaningful autonomous driving assistants and the outgoing dual-cab lacks rear curtain airbags, but the new model will addresses these safety issues, which Davies says will provide Volkswagen with another avenue of sales growth.
“We’ll be able to reinject ourselves back into the fleet space. We’ll also have variants that appeal to families, weekend warriors and large, medium and small fleets.
“In terms of the complexity of the range, we’ll have more than we’ve got now, but that’s largely because we have higher volume aspirations as well, and we can target those different groups,” he said.
How long will you wait?
Perhaps the biggest hurdle the second-generation Amarok will face when it arrives in Australia early next year will be supply – or lack thereof – if the logistics Gods fail to smile down on the new ute.
“Roughly by the end of the year we’ll be out [of stock]. So depending on how quickly we get the new one, we’ll have maybe a month or two with light stock. There could be a couple months’ gap,” said the VW executive.
“All next-gen Amaroks will come out of South Africa. We’d be looking at quarter one [2023] for new Amarok, that’s provided there’s no extended delays. That’s what we’ve got our eye on and what we can hit based on the production times,” he said.
Beyond that, the global supply chain crisis could hamper deliveries of the new Amarok, but at this stage it’s unclear whether Volkswagen will face the same production issues as Ford, which will launch the new Ranger here in June but will be short on stock due to components supply problems from China thanks to COVID lockdowns.
“They’re producing out of Thailand, we’re producing out of South Africa. I don’t know whether that means we’ll be better or worse off, I can’t really tell you at this point,” said Davies.
“Next year [vehicle supply] is going to be better. But we have started to see an improvement in production already. It’s definitely starting to return to normal. The semi-conductor issue is becoming less of a problem, but the supply chain is now a problem.”
Davies stressed that buyers who want to get a hold of a new Amarok sooner rather than later should talk to their Volkswagen dealership immediately.
“Ships docked off the coast of China just waiting is now creating its own element of frustration for everyone. Because we can now start to build them, but we can’t get them from one part of the world to the other.
“That’s the next crisis we’re all starting to deal with, but at least production is coming back online.”
Watch this space for our first drive review of the new 2022 Volkswagen Amarok W580X tomorrow (May 20).
– with staff
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