VW Introduces Its Robust Pick-Up Truck

We reported on the VW pick-up named Robust a while ago and VW has finally lifted the wraps off its forthcoming 1-ton pick-up to reveal a pre-production model simple called ‘PickUp’ at the International Automobile Exhibition in Hanover. The concept carries a lot of the design cues from the production model except for maybe its interior.

Production of the new Pickup will begin in fall 2009 at VWs “Pacheco” plant in Argentina. According to VW, the production model will only be introduced late 2009 to South America, South Africa, Australia and Europe with other markets to follow shortly after.

Volkswagen claims that this is the first pickup of this sort from any high-volume European automotive manufacturer and that the 5.18 meter long concept vehicle with the 1.55 meter long cargo bed is not based on any familiar model series of the group. Power comes from VWs latest generation common-rail turbo-diesels (TDI) though VW did not give out any other specific details on the powertrain options.

In terms of design, the Pickup follows the new VW-DNA initially presented by the company’s passenger car division in the form of the Scirocco and the sixth generation Golf. US based CarScoop suspects that the German automaker’s design team must have taken a sneak peek at the Honda Ridgeline (US only) when they were styling pickup’s rear-end.

Source: CarScoop