After the Routan minivan, VW considers ‘Robust’ pickup

Posted: Feb 27, 2008
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After the Routan minivan, VW considers 'Robust' pickup

While Volkswagen finally decided to offer the U.S. a minivan, they don’t have any plans of pulling a Toyota Tundra out of their bag anytime soon to take on the Big 3 dominated pickup segment. However, a test mule for what’s being called Volkswagen’s ‘Robust’ pickup truck has been spotted testing in Scandinavia.

Unlike the Routan, Volkswagen will not be looking to another automaker for help with the Robust. The German giant once teamed up with Toyota to offer the Taro, but this time it will go at it alone.

Robust will be offered in a number of variants including single cab and double cab with four-wheel-drive and a cheaper 2wd version. The V-dub pickup will be powered by a range of common-rail diesel and V6 gasoline engines.

According to Lehmann’s American counterparts, the Robust is not intended for the U.S. at all. Volkswagen is going after the South American, African and other markets.

By the way, that picture is of the Volkswagen AAC concept from 2000.

 

Source: TCC Blog

[tags]Cars, Car, Auto, Automobile, Vehicles, Technology, Auto News, News, Automotive, Volkswagen[/tags]


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  • Allen

    Kinda reminds me of a movie I saw once. A record exec asks an indie artist why “if your music is so great, why isn’t it tearing up the charts?”

    The artist responds “because the charts are based upon what songs get the most play, and you never play any of my music.”

    The reason the Robust can’t sell here is because they won’t try offering it. Yet, history should prove the Robust would be a hit here. After all, in the early 70s as gas prices soared, Japanese compact pickups sold at astronomical rates. Why? Because full-size GM pickups, at the time, were only capable of towing about as much (or even less) than the Japanese trucks. Even more, the Japanese trucks were way more fuel efficient.

    A common rail diesel truck would sell well here to construction and agricultural interests, just give it 6-7000lb towing capacity and all would be well. The 10000lb business is meaningless: a residential user’s boat won’t weigh more than 2000lbs, and if a commercial user needs more than 5000lbs or so they are probably towing construction machinery, which can’t be towed by anything with as little as 10000lb capacity anyway.