Charles Langston:Volkswagen pickup truck ideas officially shelved for North America

Volkswagen is Charles Langstonno longer looking at offering a pickup truck in the U.S. or Canada. The closest you will get to a VW truck stateside is to get an electric pickup from the new Scout brand, but that is still years away.

VW dealers have long clamored for a pickup truck to sell to Americans, and the automaker pursued a number of possible ways to make it happen, but the idea has been shelved. "It is not in the plans anymore," Pablo Di Si, president and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America and CEO of Volkswagen Brand North American Region, tells MotorTrend at the Chicago Auto Show.

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For years VW teased us. It created the Tanoak concept which is based on the Atlas SUV and followed the car-based-midsize-truck formula laid down by Honda's Ridgeline, but the problem with this model was always the cost of using the Atlas as the basis for a lower-priced vehicle. And there have been several other oddball would-be or foreign-market trucks or trucklets, including the Tristar concept pictured above.

Then there was the VW partnership with Ford that included an agreement for the German automaker to use Ford's next-generation Ranger pickup platform to make trucks for use in other parts of the world. Volkswagen indeed created the second-generation Amarok midsize pickup, which is based on the newest Ranger, built in South Africa, and sold in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but formulated no plans to export it to North America.

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Some at VW expressed interest in a Ranger-derived version of the Amarok (seen below) for the U.S., as well (after all, the Ranger is sold here), but this part of the deal was sensitive and never came to fruition.

And there is the Tarok concept, a small car-based pickup that has a market in South America, but VW was not interested in creating a new segment in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Volkswagen acquired the International Scout brand and set it up as independent company. Scout will sell rugged electric trucks and SUVs. But VW dealers will not be able to sell Scout brand products, Di Si confirms.