The Big V Volkswagen Amarok

South Africans love to tow boats, caravans and trailers, often at the same time, and it was these land trains that were the subject of some confusion among the German hosts at the 2009 launch of the Amarok in Argentina.

How, asked the South African devil’s advocate, would this four cylinder 2.0-litre diesel be up to the task? What was needed was a V6, something with the required grunt. No amount of persuasion by the Germans along the lines of fuel efficiency, emissions or actual turbo-induced pulling power, would sway his opinion.

The big V6 is now here, but back in 2010 local reaction to the 2.0-litre turbo four was slightly mixed. Was this bakkie too sophisticated to be a real workhorse? Did VW in fact have the credentials to make a proper bakkie? Ill-informed for the most part, these rants were enough to get forums in a frenzy. The milk and coke bottle jokes followed, even as the Amarok proved itself to be a finely engineered, quality product, and a superb performer on and off the tar. It was class-leading then, perhaps way ahead of its time, and many of its innovative technologies, from chassis construction to safety and driver aids, were glossed over or not clearly understood by a buying public blinded by brand loyalties.

Yes, there were a few issues: the extra 100mm width (1954mm) compared to most other bakkies made for a spacious interior and wide track that helped stability at speed, but could be a problem on narrow 4x4 trails. Less so than a Land Cruiser 200 Series (1980mm wide), but who wanted facts to get in the way of a good gripe. Then it was said that the beefy sump guard rails lowered effective ground clearance by nearly 40mm. True enough, but protection was fore grounded by the German engineers. Finally, the twin turbo engine, though impressively frugal and potent when spooled up, had a relatively narrow torque table, which conspired with the slightly clunky gear change to make the manual Amarok easy to stall.