Skip to main content

It Might Take More Than American Enthusiasm to Make This Volkswagen Truck a Reality

Volkswagen’s Atlas Tanoak concept was one of the few interesting products to emerge from last week’s New York auto show, but the Atlas-based pickup remains a one-off for now. The automaker plans to judge consumer interest before making a decision to scrap the idea or sign off on a production version. Naturally, with VW staking it’s U.S. fortunes on light trucks, the volume-seeking company would like to get as much mileage out of its Atlas architecture as possible. See the two-row Atlas Cross Sport for Exhibit B.

But does the Tanoak’s future hinge on Americans expressing an overwhelming desire for a VW truck? Not entirely.

According to Wards Auto, Volkswagen of America CEO Hinrich Woebcken’s gaze doesn’t end at the continent’s perimeter. The Tanoak’s production could hinge on foreign demand.

“We potentially would not only look at the data for demand here in the United States to get business economics together,” Woebcken said at a media roundtable last week. “Maybe then also there is the opportunity of exporting the pickup truck out of the United States and generating scale of economy out of this.”

The automaker’s Chattanooga plant, which produces the Atlas (and its future variants, if green-lit), has a potential annual production capacity of 500,000 vehicles. It isn’t using close to that amount. Currently, workers in Chattanooga build only the Atlas and dwindling Passat, with the three-row MQB platform crossover recently going on sale in the Middle East and Russia.

So, production capacity isn’t a roadblock for a potential U.S. VW truck, just its market. U.S. buyers looking for an unusual pickup might one day have overseas interest to thank for their new Tanoak, but other problems remain. In creating the Tanoak concept, VW stretched the donor Atlas’ wheelbase by 11 inches in order to craft a useable bed. This puts the Tanoak, as we know it now, dangerously close to full-size territory, Woebken said.

For marketing purposes as much as anything else, VW has to first decide what it wants the Tanoak to be: a midsize lifestyle pickup, or a brawnier, more capable full-size.

Should interest surpass VW brass’ wildest expectations, we wonder whether Chattanooga’s production of the Tanoak, Atlas, its five-seater derivative, and the Passat would alter VW’s tentative plans to utilize the plant for electric vehicles. Late last year, VW brand boss Herbert Diess said Chattanooga was the automaker’s “first choice” for production of I.D.-branded EVs.

a version of this article first appeared on The Truth About Cars

The post It Might Take More Than American Enthusiasm to Make This Volkswagen Truck a Reality appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2q171UZ
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster Review

“Supercars just don’t excite me anymore.” These words, spoken to me over a month ago by another journalist, friend, and (so-called) enthusiast were echoing in my head for far too long, but they’ve finally been drowned out. Drowned out by the wail of a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12 engine mounted in the middle of the new Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster. My friend’s point is that back in the good old days, there was a crop of supercars that captured the imagination with amazing style, sounds, performance, and more. Today, it seems like everything is capable of supercar performance, with large luxury sedans outdoing some of the best and most dedicated teams of car nuts, while former pillars of automotive excellence are suddenly pumping out family-friendly SUVs. Beyond that, another league of supercars, dubbed hypercars have cropped up with hybrid gas-electric powertrains that make magical things happen quickly, but at the cost of the acoustic drama, visual flair, and engag...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers.  The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience.  So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf.  In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...
Post a Comment
Read more