It’s not often that South Africa hosts global motoring launches, but with Volkswagen’s all-new Amarok now being produced locally at Ford’s Silverton plant, it must have made sense for the German VW honchos to unveil their new double cab to media from both the northern and southern hemispheres, on our home soil.

The first rotation that I attended was with a bunch of all-male German petrolheads. I know a smattering of German. My mother was second-generation Deutsch; I studied the basic lingo in high school, and for the past eight years I’ve been shacked up with a Tinder swipe-right who hails from the southern region of the Heimat.

On Day One I got a weird kick from rushing up to serious-looking motoring scribes with names like Heinz, Werner and Manfred and babbling, “Wie gehts?” (How are you?) “Hast du gut geschlafen?” (Did you sleep well?) and “Es ist sehr heiss heute.” (It’s very hot today.) Not that they hadn’t noticed. 

On the first day, we found ourselves in remote Grabouw where temperatures were soaring close to 40°C. In response to my attempts at South African hospitality, most of them gave me no more than a nod. The Germans can take themselves very seriously and historically they are not known for extending open arms to foreigners. But let me not digress. The Amarok.

First launched in SA in 2010, over the past 12 years the Amarok has sold around 42,000 units locally and close to a million globally.

The local numbers are nothing close to the sales of Toyota’s Hilux or Ford’s Ranger, and customers who choose to go for the German bakkie badge are often considered to be a bit more elite, attracted not only to the Amarok’s impressive off-road capabilities, but also to the premium vibes that this “ute”offers.

VW, Ford collaboration

Over the past four years, the all-new VW bakkie was developed and designed in both Hanover, Germany, and Melbourne, Australia, in collaboration with Volkswagen and Ford, because the new Ford Ranger (which I will review in the coming weeks) and the new Amarok are built on exactly the same platform and in the same factory.

This is hardly something new or uncommon in the motoring world. Over the years, a number of manufacturers have collaborated by sharing chassis, engines and parts to save costs. For example, VW’s popular Touareg borrows the chassis from Lamborghini’s superfast SUV, the Urus. In fact, the Touareg also shares the platform with the Bentley Bentayga, Audi’s RSQ8 and the Porsche Cayenne.

A not-so-successful colab occurred when Mercedes-Benz teamed up with Nissan to produce the much-anticipated bakkie, the Merc X-Class, sharing the same chassis as the Navara.

Launched in 2017 — although there were significant differences between the two bakkies — the X-Class was soon regarded as an expensive rebrand of a Nissan pickup. The critics were brutal. Along the way, the X-Class inherited the unfortunate label of “a Navara with mascara”. General public perception was tainted and by 2020, Merc’s X-Class halted production, a dismal and extremely expensive failure for the three-pointed star brand.

However, the collaboration between Ford and VW on their Rangers and Amaroks appears to be a well thought out one — it’s an interesting partnership and one that has yielded the creation of two distinct vehicles that benefit from the best think tanks from the German and American motoring giants.

While opposing diehard Amarok and Ford fans may be ripping at their branded T-shirts in disgust, the partnership makes financial sense for both companies. 

Rear view of the Amarok. (Photo: VWSA)

The new Amarok, with its all-new V6 3.0-litre turbo diesel engine, offering 184kW and 600Nm torque, will officially go on sale in the first quarter of 2023.

It will come in two guises: the top-spec Adventura, featuring 21-inch alloy wheels, chrome flourishes and a very handy electronic roller shutter for the load bay that can be controlled with a simple touch of a button on the key. 

There are chrome side steps, a Harmon Kardon sound system and more upmarket leather-type seat trim compared with the more rugged-looking PanAmericana, which gets stuff like black styling, 18-inch black alloys, roof rails, a spray-in bed-liner, LED tail-lights, a soft load cover and an eight-speaker audio system.

The Amarok in its blue Adventura and PanAmericana guise. (Photo: VWSA)

Although the new Amarok and Ranger share the same engines and chassis, there are significant differences between the two when it comes to exterior and interior styling.

There’s way more than just a badge to distinguish the two.

In fact, when it comes to the outsides, the only shared parts are the roof, the door handles and the mirror casings.

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Looks-wise, the Amarok is less obviously American in its styling, although it has plenty of macho presence. In my books, when it comes to exterior design, with its updated headlights, C-shaped tail lights and an all-new beefy grille, it may just be the finest-looking bakkie in the B-segment. One thing’s for sure — the Amarok is BIG.

With a wheelbase of 3,270mm (173mm longer than the outgoing model), it’s also grown in length by almost 10cm and now stretches to 5.3 metres. So if you found space a bit tight housing your old one, I’d suggest building a new garage. The payload has increased to 1.2 tonnes and it now offers a whopping maximum towing capacity of 3.5 tonnes. The roof of the Amarok can also take a load of 350kg.

The tablet-like touchscreen dominates the cabin. (Photo: Volkswagen)

Inside, the cabin is very VW, with leather everywhere, including the dashboard and uniquely VW multifunction leather steering wheel.

When it comes to tech, there’s been a much-needed major upgrade by way of a new portrait style 10.0- or 12.0-inch touchscreen. While its operating system is based on Ford’s SYNC 4, the Amarok has its own graphics.

I found the set-up and main menu logical and user-friendly, although once you get deeper into “submenus”, I would definitely need some dedicated time to become familiar with all the tech on offer. Thankfully, the designers have retained a number of physical control buttons that provide access to things like aircon and temperature adjustment.

The Amarok’s seats are also markedly different to the Ranger’s and that’s where I was particularly aware of good old German premium quality. They are comfortable and supportive, although I did find I had to use considerable force to pull down the driver’s armrest.

The previous Amarok was somewhat ungenerous for rear passengers, and thankfully this has been significantly improved to make the back seat experience more pleasurable.

Safety and tech

The old one felt dated when it came to safety and tech; I mean, the previous generation didn’t even have rear airbags. In its new guise, the Amarok now offers more than 30 driver assist systems, a vast majority of these encompassing sophisticated autonomous driving tech. These include auto emergency braking, traffic sign recognition, lane-keep assist, blind spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control, trailer assist, and a very handy 360-degree camera for parking and off-roading. Thankfully there are centre-front airbags as well as knee and curtain airbags as standard across the range.

Our drive around the Cape encompassed more on-road driving than off-roading. (Perhaps because the German media were not as used to extreme gravel situations like us hard-ass Saffers — the off-road route arranged by their team was pretty mild, but I look forward to reviewing the Amarok’s 4×4 prowess at the local launch next year.)

Along the route, what stuck out for me was the superior suspension, facilitating a smooth drive, aided by specialised VW dampers.

After driving the Ranger last week, it was here that I noticed the biggest difference between the two bakkies in their fine tuning. The new V6 engine shared by both is really good and proved acceptably efficient at around 10 litres/100km. There’s no lag between gear shifts, the drive feels crisp, without any irksome clatter, and, despite its size, it feels hungry to accelerate. 

In the final analysis, the refined 2023 Amarok with all its new tech and autonomous capabilities holds its own in enough areas to make it feel like a genuine VW product.

The impressive shared engines between Ford and Volkswagen will ensure that the battle of the bakkies will just get a whole lot more heated as both sides shout: “Mine is better!”

Pricing: To be announced on launch in Q1, 2023. DM