When Volkswagen released their Amarok pickup, I was very disappointed to find that it’s not coming to North America. It looked like a brilliant truck. However, the Amarok could be coming here after all.

PickupTrucks.com was speaking to Stefan Jacoby, President and CEO of Volkswagen of America, and he said that to make money on the Amarok, Volkswagen would have to sell 100,000 units each year. Problem is, that is one hell of an ambitious goal. The only compact pickup to sell that many units this year was the Toyota Tacoma, and only just. 102,327 were sold (As of November). The next highest seller sold just 51,097 units (As of December 16th).

To add more issues to this, the compact pickup segment is declining. More and more people are buying bigger pickup trucks. Volkswagen doesn’t have many dealers in areas where pickups are popular. Then there’s the so-called “Chicken Tax”. It adds a 25% tariff to all pickups made outside the US, and the Amarok is made in Argentina. Lastly, Jacoby said that Volkswagen has more important vehicles to bring to the market. So, it looks unlikely.

However, he did say that once they’re done with the more important vehicles, they’ll have a look at the Amarok, so you never know. Perhaps they could move some Amarok production to the US to get rid of the “Chicken Tax”. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Source: PickupTrucks.com