What if Volkswagen's "Atlas" Crossover is Actually a Fake Out for a Truck?

"Wobbles the Mind" (wobblesthemind)
10/18/2016 at 23:02 • Filed to: Volkswagen

Hear me out for a moment. What if Volkswagen is just using the CUV to hold the nameplate and to keep us from realizing they are making a full-size truck in a crazy brilliant move? I mean “Atlas” is a hell of a badass name for a three row crossover. What if the CUVs were actually being called Tiguan, Touareg, and Teramont while the trucks were the Amarok and Atlas?

The import tax is about to be lifted (or something like that) and trucks are all profit and pretty much exempt from a ton of increasingly strigent regulations. Didn’t the morning shift today mention the F150 was 90% of Ford’s profits for the last quarter? Why wouldn’t everyone try to jump into that fray, even for just 10,000 annual buyers? Better than releasing a fat sedan for the same price and no profitability.

I mean as far as just midsize pickups go we are about to have an all new Jeep truck, the Ranger, Frontier, plus refreshed Tacoma, Colorado, and Canyon. Then we have the Ridgeline and whatever the Santa Cruz ends up being positioned as. We know Mercedes is working on a truck, that VW has a truck and that trucks ALWAYS sell. Even when no one is buying your truck, that model is still real profit and even not having a 10 year goal of getting 1% of the market is enough to bankroll an entire sedan and performance lineup and then some!

DISCUSSION (16)

Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire > Wobbles the Mind
10/18/2016 at 23:14

Or you’re smoking crack

Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) > Wobbles the Mind
10/18/2016 at 23:18

You are wrong:

Kinja'd!!!

Garrett Davis > Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire
10/18/2016 at 23:54

Why can’t it be and?

Garrett Davis > Wobbles the Mind
10/18/2016 at 23:54

Chicken tax.

facw > Garrett Davis
10/19/2016 at 01:34

I assume that’s what this was referring to:

The import tax is about to be lifted (or something like that)

Of course it’s not true, and I think there’s zero chance of it happening in this political climate.

duurtlang > Wobbles the Mind
10/19/2016 at 03:54

The thing with those big trucks is that in a way they’re similar to Kei cars in Japan; it’s the Galapagos effect. They’re only viable in one market. There’s zero demand for a truck like that in Europe, despite VWs combined brands holding almost one quarter (!) of the entire European market. All the R&D costs will have to be made back in that one market, and VW is never going to be a major player in the truck market in the US. That’s risky.

duurtlang > Garrett Davis
10/19/2016 at 03:55

Irrelevant if it’s built in North America. If VW were to build a truck like that it would do so in NA anyway, as there’s no market for vehicles like that elsewhere.

That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms > Wobbles the Mind
10/19/2016 at 06:05

I’m kinda shocked they’re able to use that name, since the Atlas was the name of the Ford truck concept that was basically their current truck. You’d think Ford would hold a trademark on the name.

bhtooefr > Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now)
10/19/2016 at 06:37

He’s not saying that the Atlas doesn’t exist, he’s saying that the rumored Teramont name is the actual name, and Atlas is being held for a pickup or something.

Which, yeah, no, I doubt that.

BugEyedBimmer - back in the Saddle Dakota Leather > Wobbles the Mind
10/19/2016 at 06:44

The problem with the truck idea is that VW has lost their biggest competitive advantage in that realm, the TDIs. The idea of the Amarok was super sweet when we thought we could get it with the 3.0 TDI. But can you imagine it with the 3.6? That would be sub-par at best, not to mention that engine is being phased out. The only engine that would make it class-competitive would be the Audi 3.0T, but then you’re talking about pushing the starting price into the 40s.

I, for one, would rather just see a modern Caddy built off of the Alltrac and using the Golf R engine than worry about a full size pickup anymore.

Garrett Davis > duurtlang
10/19/2016 at 09:28

I will have to disagree with you on that last point. Small/ medium sized trucks are probably more popular elsewhere in the world than the US, where full-size trucks reign supreme.

Let us not forget that VW actually has their Amarok midsize truck outside the US, as does Ford with the Ranger, Toyotas got the Hilux — which is very different that the Tacoma, Chevy still has the S-10 elsewhere and the Montana, the Isuzu D-Max, Mitsubishi Triton, UAZ Pickup, and so on.

America isn’t the only place where trucks are popular.

duurtlang > Garrett Davis
10/19/2016 at 09:36

Vehicles like the Amarok, Ranger and Hilux are still rare in Europe. Excluding some gardeners no one uses a pickup truck here. I can go for days without seeing a single pickup truck of any size or brand.

Having said that, I thought we were talking about trucks larger than the Amarok. Slotted above the Amarok. Something you’d consider “full size”.

Garrett Davis > duurtlang
10/19/2016 at 11:26

I’m talking the rest of the world, since you mentioned there wouldn’t be a market anywhere else than North America. Trucks are still very popular in South America, much of Africa, Russia, south east Asia, etc.

I guess I missed the fact that the Atlas was a fullsize.

bhtooefr > BugEyedBimmer - back in the Saddle Dakota Leather
10/19/2016 at 17:35

They could resurrect the 4.2 V8 (based on the current Audi 4.0T) and use a truck-optimized variant of the 5.2 V10... but, yeah, it doesn’t really make sense.

Berang > Wobbles the Mind
10/19/2016 at 21:07

Honestly the U.S. should just ban trucks.

Berang > duurtlang
10/19/2016 at 21:13

It’s weird, that in the U.S. we give manufacturers incentive to produce objectively awful vehicles which magnify the problems of cars, while in Japan they give incentive to people to buy cars that reduce most problems associated with cars.