The current, second generation of the Ford Ranger T6 with a touch of Volkswagen, that’s the new (and also second) generation of the VW Amarok pickup in a nutshell. This double cab draft horse resides in Belgium and everything you want to know is written all over it.
The Amorak rolled off the production line with the 4Motion drivetrain, a V6 engine under its hood, and the PanAmericana, ‘off-road style’ trim level.
All Amaroks are made in South Africa. A genuine bakkie!
The V6 badges on the grille and tailgate refer to the 241 DIN-hp, 3.0 liter Ford Power Stroke turbodiesel. The Amarok V6 always comes with the 10-speed automatic transmission.
An Ifor Williams Trailers tandem axle car transporter is coupled to the pickup. The manufacturer from the UK is an established name in the trailer world.
The production of the new Amarok started in the spring of 2023, but our VW organization has decided not to offer it in the Netherlands. So if it has to be a Vee Dub here to tow your 3,500 kg Ifor Williams, the dealership choice is between the Touareg and the Crafter. Luckily, the latter is also available as some sort of bakkie.
Very interesting. We very rarely see Amaroks in the US but always with Mexico plates. Would be interesting to see them sold here but now the small to mid-size market is pretty saturated. It would’ve been more viable in 2015 when I saw my first one in Colorado.
Plenty of this here in Argentina. Popular truck as the Ranger and Hilux.
The TDI engine in one of the most reliable modern diesels.
Nice VW Anorak; I mean Amarok.
There’s a lot of badge engineering here since Mazda was involved in this generation of Ford Ranger, although Mazda now sells a rebadged Isuzu pickup. For low volume models outside a maker’s core competency buying in makes. The first generation Volkswagen Crafter was a rebadged Sprinter, although VW switched to an in house design for the current generation.
I had forgotten Ifor Williams did trailers, I most associate the with truck canopies
Right, I guess the numero uno of the commercial vehicle rebadges must be the full-size van/light truck as offered by Fiat, Citroën, Peugeot, Opel, Vauxhall, Toyota, and Ram.
It’s also by far the oldest, dating back to 2006 (never mind the numerous updates since).
The newest full-sizer must be the current series of Renault Masters/Nissan Interstars.
Here in South Africa there are 27 Ford Ranger models on sale versus 13 for Amarok. Ford is the volume seller but there is a strong case for the Amarok as VW fans are not going to buy Ford. Ford is South Africa’s biggest vehicle exporter thanks to the Ranger. Sam in the comments considers the Amarok small to mid-size for the US, here Amarok/Ranger is the biggest size bakkie one can get, outside of a handful of special US imports.
From a consumer standpoint, I just don’t get it. If I want a Ford-built vehicle, I’d much rather buy it from a Ford dealer, where I’d feel more confident that the technicians knew how to service and repair it.
There was a period in the US when VW sold a rebadged Chrysler minivan. I have to believe that VW technicians weren’t well-trained on them.
There are a few exceptions, of course. If it’s 1986 and you want a Corolla, the dealer probably has a big markup and maybe you can’t find one at all, mostly owing to Reagan’s Voluntary Export Restrictions on Japanese cars. So I would certainly have headed to the local Chevrolet dealer and purchased a Nova that was assembled in the US and bypassed the restrictions, maybe even selling at a discount. And since the Nova sold in some healthy volume, I think it would be more likely to find a Chevy tech who understood them. But that’s an exception.
The bigger picture here is the global VW-Ford alliance.
Ford Transit Connect, based on the VW Caddy.
VW Transporter T7, based on the Ford Transit Custom.
VW Amarok, based on the Ford Ranger T6.
Furthermore, Ford uses VW’s MEB platform (electric vehicles).
Ford shares diesel engines with PSA in everything they build. Rangers have a bad rep for oil soluble transmissions here.
Fancy, a VW designed and engineered right here in Australia, by Ford Oz.
The previous actual-VW Amarok had a very mixed record here. It seems you got a good one or a terrible one when it came to basic mechanical reliability, with the local operation being far more the latter adjective than the former if trouble struck.
Still, Australia’s tradies are on a relentless march upwards in wealth (long story) and are as susceptible to badge snobbery as anyone else now: certainly was never the case in the past. God knows Mercedes sold enough of those silly re-badged Nissan Navara X-Class utes (whereupon owners soon learnt that the poor service response from VW looked like gold-standard next to how the local Merc outfit behaved).
Have they renamed the Ford/PSA Lion V6?Probably a good idea it took forever to eke even mild reliability out of it a new name seems a good idea, There are Rangers all over the place in NZ it sells quite well, VW Amaroks are common now those two are blended have the problems doubled or halved.