Volkswagen Amarok review
by David Finlay (25 May 2011)
If it seems odd that Volkswagen should have decided to enter the pickup market (not one known for its preponderance of German manufacturers), there's no doubt that its challenger, the Amarok, is a fine piece of work. I have heard a colleague complain that it seems rough and unrefined compared with VW's more conventional products, but it's a pickup, for heaven's sake! It doesn't have anything like the quality of a Golf - there's a fair bit of engine noise, and the interior plastics are on the cheap side - but was anyone really expecting it to?
All Amaroks are double cabs, with bags of space up front and good headroom (though less impressive legroom) in the rear. At the business end there's a 2.5 square metre loadspace, and you can carry a Euro pallet sideways if you choose to.
The Amarok (whose name, since you ask, means "wolf" to Inuit Indians in Greenland and northern Canada) comes with only one engine, a two-litre TDI turbo diesel, but there's a choice of 120bhp or 161bhp power outputs. The 120bhp version is available only with the most basic trim, called Startline, and it gives the Amarok impressive green figures of 37.2mpg combined and 199g/km of CO2.
Equivalent figures for the 161bhp models are 35.8mpg and 209g/km, so they're slightly more expensive to tax each year. A six-speed manual gearbox is standard in each case.
Four-wheel drive is selectable on most models and permanent on the more expensive of the two Highline variants. The permanent system may sound more impressive, but it comes with a rear suspension system tuned more for comfort than for hard work and leads to reduced rear axle load limit (down from 1860kg to 1600kg), gross vehicle weight (from 3170kg to 2820kg) and payload (from 1119kg or 1064kg, depending on trim level, to 750kg).
I drove, and was seriously impressed by, a selectable version on an off-road course chosen by Volkswagen. Like its close rival, the Ford Ranger, it is exceptionally good when being driven extremely slowly. When my instructor asked me to point the Amarok up a steep hill, I assumed he would then suggest that I select second gear and tramp on the accelerator pedal, which is how I was always taught to deal with steep hills when I was starting from the bottom.
Instead, he told me to select first and let the pickup crawl up the hill without any help from me at all. Which it did.
Later on, we tackled another, slightly less steep, hill going downwards. To my alarm and dismay, he sent me down that one in neutral - the very thing, I had previously been told, which would lead to a plummet, some expensive crashing noises, and perhaps poor circulation and shortness of breath. But no, the Amarok's downhill speed limiter kept everything under control.
Things became positively weird when the instructor told me to press the accelerator. I did that, and we trundled down a little more quickly. Still in neutral. It wasn't magic - it was actually just a case of the Amarok reacting to the pedal pressure and raising its self-imposed speed limit - but oh, boy, did it feel like it.
It's worth mentioning that that particular Amarok was fitted with off-road tyres. Still, although it might have struggled over some of the more difficult sections on regular rubber, I don't imagine this would be a problem for most users.
On the open road, the Amarok is about as well-behaved as you could reasonably expect a pickup to be. It may not be especially quiet, but the diesel roar seems fairly distant, and the steering (while perhaps more servo-assisted than I'd like it to be) is impressively accurate.
The traditional problem with unladen pickups on tarmac is that they have tended to be a bit wayward if you apply too much power too early in a corner. I gave the Amarok plenty of opportunity to make a fool of itself, but even with lots of pedal action in the middle of tight bends with the transmission set to rear-wheel drive (admittedly on a bone-dry road) it behaved perfectly.
The only thing I can really complain about is that the handbrake lever is set too far to the left for a right-hand drive car. Apart from that, it strikes me as being a most impressive newcomer to the pickup sector.
It also has the distinction of being the best pickup you can buy for pedestrian protection, according to Euro NCAP. Its results in the safety organisation's crash tests can't be directly compared with those of its rivals, since the procedure was changed before the Amarok was tested but after all the others were, though concerns have been raised about driver chest protection in a side impact, and whiplash protection is described as "marginal".
Amarok prices (not including VAT or delivery) start at £16,995 for the Startline with the 120bhp engine, to which you can add £1000 for the 161bhp engine and a further £1000 for an upgrade to the mid-range Trendline trim level. Both the selectable and the permanent 4x4 versions of the Highline cost £21,575. Including both VAT and delivery, prices range from £20,944 to £26,440.
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