VW teases new Amarok ute

Wednesday, 18 March 2020

The next generation of Amarok will look something like this and ride on the bones of the Ford Ranger.

Volkswagen has teased its next generation of Amarok and it looks like Ford will impart some of its ute know-how for the project.

The teaser image was shown during Volkswagen's Annual Media Conference as chairman Herbert Diess said the Amarok will be one of the first models to come from the VW/Ford collaboration. Both companies entered into a partnership back in January 2019 to work on vans and pick-ups.

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The announcement indicates the new Amarok will share a lot of parts as well as the platform underpinning the upcoming Ranger update.

The sketch shows a muscular truck with huge wheel arches, a bulging bonnet, an almost Mitsubishi-like nose and plenty of exaggerated lines. We wouldn't expect the final version to look like this but it's a good indication of what design route VW is planning on taking.

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We should see the new Amarok and Ranger by 2022 or so. The inter-company tie up does beg the question - will we see a high-performance Amarok in the same vein as the Ranger Raptor?

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According to Motor Authority, the Ford-based VW ute has only been announced for the South American, European and African markets. We've reached out to the local arm to see what the go is for New Zealand's market.

New versions of both the Amarok and the Ranger should dot down sometime around 2022, hopefully preceded by the long-rumoured V8 Raptor.

The next Ranger could adopt styling similar to the larger F-150 truck in order to bring the family design closer together.

Moving beyond the ute world, a new Ford Transit Connect could emerge soon with VW Caddy bones. Another smaller Ford-badged VW-based van is likely while the American will help the German with larger commercial vans.

The two companies also said they would look into possibly cooperating on electric and autonomous cars and were willing to consider additional projects but without taking shares in each other