• Volkswagen says that producing a pickup truck in North America is not a priority.
• The company had shown the Tarok in New York in 2019, raising the hopes of customers… and dealers.
• VW’s new Scout sub-brand is expected to offer a pickup truck in our market starting in 2026.
At the 2019 New York Auto Show, a Tarok pickup concept was on display at the Volkswagen booth. The presence of this light-duty truck on this continent had reignited speculation about VW possibly producing a pickup for North America.
The mid-size and full-size pickup segments are gold mines for manufacturers, so it’s not surprising most give serious thought to entering them. Volkswagen dealers in the U.S. have been asking for this type of model for a long time. The presence of the Tarok at the New York Auto Show raised a lot of hopes.
Those hopes were, it seems, for naught. Thomas Schafer, Volkswagen's new global head, recently told Automotive News that a North American pickup truck is not in the company's plans, this even though the company is developing a rugged SUV platform in anticipation of the future models that will bear the Scout badge. A North American pickup is just not part of Volkswagen's plans.
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At the same time, Volkswagen's new boss for North America, Pablo Di Si, said that any future Volkswagen pickup truck will have to be electrified.
Either way, we won't see a Volkswagen pickup coming to North America, especially since Schafer pointed out that “at the moment, we have a clear lineup all the way through the second half of this decade.”
The only hope for VW and pickup fans is the new Scout brand, which will only offer utility vehicles, including a vehicle in pickup-truck-body format. That model isn't expected until 2026, though.