But not until 2025 at the earliest and VW’s homegrown tough-truck won’t deliver a 292kW V6 petrol punch like the Ford Ranger Raptor
The all-new 2023 Volkswagen Amarok will be officially released in Australia next week in a number of guises, including a unique 222kW turbo-petrol ‘Aventura’ urban warrior with 21-inch alloy wheels, but a range-topping hero truck with a tub-thumping engine to battle the Ford Ranger Raptor is conspicuous by its absence.
The good news is that Volkswagen Australia already has plans in motion to remedy the situation with a successor to the first-generation Amarok W580 models built and engineered locally by the Walkinshaw Group.
The bad news is these new homegrown tough-trucks are almost certain to be more expensive than the $86,790-plus Ford Ranger Raptor and are still a few years away from rolling into Volkswagen dealerships.
Volkswagen Australia’s head of commercial vehicles, Ryan Davies, told carsales the relationship with Walkinshaw is still strong and the partnership will continue with the new-generation Amarok.
“There’s desire on both sides, yeah, and we’re sort of going through the stages of that now. We’re just trying to get the Amarok launched first and then we’ll follow that up,” he said.
“But typically those programs take about two years, maybe even slightly longer – two or three years to come to fruition.”
That would put the launch of a new-generation VW Amarok ‘W600’ – denoting the torque output of its new Ford-sourced 3.0-litre V6 turbo-diesel – in 2025 at the earliest.
Whether or not Walkinshaw can tweak the Amarok’s V6 this time around to deliver more mumbo than standard (184kW and 600Nm) while retaining a factory warranty remains to be seen, but Davies says an upgraded powertrain cannot be ruled out at this stage.
But one thing is certain – the new Amarok will not get the Ford ranger Raptor’s scorching 292kW/583Nm turbo-petrol V6.
“So they [Ford] have said that [Raptor engine] is off the table for us for the partnership, but I think we’ve demonstrated in the past that in Australia we’re pretty creative people and where there’s a will there might well be a way,” said Davies.
“And I’m sure that we can investigate some options in the future that might give us a unique model that could have a different slant on what Raptor is doing.
“We still firmly believe that the customers that are buying a ute like that like the diesel power and like the ability to tow,” he said, adding that lower fuel consumption and greater cruising range will have appeal.
The Volkswagen Amarok W600 can be expected to benefit from upgrades similar to those seen on the W580 models, such as improved suspension with increased ride height, all-terrain tyres and extra underbody protection for a W600X off-road version to replace the W580X.
Meantime like the W580S, the road-focussed W600S could score sportier suspension, steering, tyres and a ground-hugging stance.
Produced at Walkinshaw’s Clayton facility in Victoria, W-series Amarok vehicles had an almost two-year production run at the end of the original Amarok’s lifecycle, but the new W600 models are likely to have a much longer lifespan given they could be on sale within three years of an expected 10-year model cycle for the new Amarok.
For those who can’t wait another two or three years for the ultimate Volkswagen Amarok, the German auto brand is offering specialised on- and off-road Amarok flagships from launch, in the form of the Aventura with its 21-inch alloy wheels and sporty tyres and the PanAmericana, which rides on 18-inch alloys with all-terrain tyres.
While there will no Raptor-spec Amarok for the foreseeable future, Volkswagen has confirmed it will leverage Ford’s electrification tech to deliver plug-in hybrid and all-electric EV versions of the Amarok later this decade.
Stay tuned for our first Australian drive review of the new Volkswagen Amarok at 7:00pm next Thursday (May 11).
Digital images: spdesignsest, kelsonic
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Keyword: New Volkswagen Amarok ‘W600’ coming