While Volkswagen waits for its electric vehicles to arrive in Australia, most of its local sales will be driven by diesel double-cab utes.
The new Volkswagen Amarok ute is forecast to be the brand’s best-selling vehicle in Australia this year – even with only half of the year to take up the sales charge – while the company waits for its electric line-up to arrive.
Strong demand for diesel double-cab utes – and ongoing supply restrictions of its petrol-powered hatchbacks and SUVs – will put the Amarok back on top for Volkswagen in Australia after it was the top-seller in 2021.
Volkswagen Australia says pre-launch interest in the new Amarok – a mechanical twin to the Ford Ranger, but built in South Africa rather than Thailand – had exceeded any other model the company had launched in Australia.
“It’s the most pre-sale interest we’ve had on any VW model in history,” Ryan Davies, head of commercial vehicles at Volkswagen told Drive. “We’ve got well over 12,000 expressions of interest as of right now.”
The Volkswagen Amarok was the brand’s top-selling vehicle in Australia in 2021, but sales slowed in 2022 as the model reached the end of its lifecycle.
Now the Amarok name is poised to return to the top of the Volkswagen sales charts in Australia.
“We’ll probably sell around 8000 this year, just based on timing,” Mr Davies told Drive.
“Our annual target will be 10,000-plus and in this market, that is still only five per cent (market) share. The question we will be asking ourselves is, why can’t we go higher?”
If Volkswagen Australia delivers 10,000 Amarok utes – or more – in a calendar year, it will be a new record.
The previous annual high for the Volkswagen Amarok resulted in 9290 vehicles reported as sold in 2018.
“It might be that we can do more,” Mr Davies told Drive. “Some of our dealers think we’re under-calling it, and maybe we are.”
Volkswagen said initial interest is skewing in favour of more expensive, V6 diesel variants – however demand for the twin-turbo four-cylinder diesel is expected to still account for a reasonable portion of sales.
As previously reported, both diesels are Ford engines with the same outputs.
“The (popularity of the V6 diesel) will move around over the life cycle of the car,” Mr Davies told Drive. “I would say that in the longer term, we wouldn’t expect the V6 to be as high a mix as it’s been in the past.”
The turbo-diesel V6 accounted for up to 90 per cent of sales of the previous-generation Amarok at one point in its life.
Volkswagen Australia has forecast the Style model grade – the successor to the Highline – will be the most popular variant in the new Amarok line-up, accounting up to six out of every 10 sales.
The surprise packet of the new Volkswagen Amarok line-up looks to be the new 2.3-litre four-cylinder, turbocharged petrol engine (222kW and 452Nm) borrowed from the Ford Mustang and Ford Focus ST. For now, it is only available in the top-line Aventura.
“The petrol Aventura, at the start, we thought sales percentages would be in the low single-digit range,” said Mr Davies. “It’s new for us, and we don’t really know what the real potential of that engine is.”
Meanwhile, waiting times depend on the model variant and colour, but Volkswagen says Australia is a high priority market for the vehicle globally.
“We’re the number one market globally for Amarok,” said Mr Davies. “And it definitely helps with supply out of South Africa, it’s three weeks to get from South Africa to Perth, a much shorter trip, and the cadence of ships is more regular (than the previous Amarok sourced from South America).”
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