DON'T BUY: Volkswagen Amarok V6 W-Series
Volkswagen has teamed up with Walkinshaw to make their old death-trap dual-cab ute even faster. Here’s what they don’t say in the brochure…
My very good friends at Volkswagen have linked arms with Australia’s premier antique bumper bar factory in beautiful, scenic Clayton. They’ve found a new way to make their outdated death-trap dual-cab ute even faster. Well done.
Volkswagen is of course the automotive industry definition of having a chequered history in my view, most memorably for that shifty business behind the shed in 2015 with the cheat software, which was definitive, as per court rulings.
In the meantime, Volkswagen Australia has joined forces with Walkinshaw Performance, and they’ve spent millions recently on a hilariously nauseating ad campaign. It even appears they mean business - the ad looks like it was shot on a Red or an Alexa… with a proper director.
This advertising travesty takes us on a journey to an entirely fake place, in the Dingo Piss Creek World Heritage hinterland, called Walkinshaw Station. Where wild Amaroks are taken off the boat from Argentina where they are in fact manufactured (that’s according to Redbook) and broken in, just like the colt from old regret (The Man From Snowy River).
It’s that stereotypically, jingoistically bad. Plus, there’s lots of backlit dust, a laser cut special sign to legitimise the outright vomit-inducing wank factor of the fake-ness, branding the shitbox Amaroks, campfires and Brokeback beard stroking.
I’m feeling it. Are you? That’s how you know it’s real. Let us visit a world like no other.
Walkinshaw station pays homage, of course, to the former HSV bumper bar factory nestled in beautiful scenic Clayton, in Melbourne, appropriately represented by this pile of rotting pallets right next door to its heritage-listed bumper bar production line. Great work, Google Maps.
And that’s reality versus marketing, in a metaphor, right there.
Volkswagen dudes, just quickly, please get the metric system and basic grammar right. No commas until you get to 10,000, and it’s ‘braked towing capacity’, because it’s not a proper noun.
Anyway, work with me here, Volkswagen marketing types: According to the official steroid Amarok 580S specifications, the unladen weight including those beautiful new wheel arch flares is 2284 kilos. And the gross combination mass is 6000. You can see the problem, right? If not, I’ll explain...
USEFUL LINKS FOR USING YOUR UTE
The Applied Physics of Heavy Towing >>
When can I use '4H' in my new 4X4? >>
When should you modify your vehicle? >>
Towing 3500kg with your 4WD ute: Worst idea ever >>
Load levelling & weight distribution hitches >>
Engine run-in advice for tradies with utes >>
Complete heavy towing guide: GVM, GCM, payload, towball limits explained >>
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DON’T TOW THE LINE ON HEAVY HAULAGE
If I hitch up my distinctive 3.5-tonne aluminium caravan to my ultimate small penis Amarok 580S, then in order not to exceed the GCM limit of six tonnes, I can only carry 216kgs. That’s because 6000 minus 3500, minus a 2284kg GVM is 216 kilos.
If you carry more than 216 kilos in the ‘roided-up Amarok with 3.5 tonnes attached, it is overloaded. That’s you and your girlfriend, your changes of underwear, spare batteries, lube, eski, some firewood and the rest.
I don’t think you’ll be carrying all that with 3.5 tonnes behind. You will have to make sacrifices.
It’s amazing, how the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission can sleep through a volley of bullshit this loud, isn’t it? This claim is simply untrue: you need to reduce the payload by 75 per cent when you quote ‘load them up’ with a 3500-kilo trailer. I’d say that was being fairly shy with the load, right there. Misleading automotive advertising goes unchecked once again.
And this ‘ready for anything’ rubbish statement. Yeah, ready for anything except crashing. See, as a discerning automotive consumer, one of the most valuable skills you should develop is to listen hard for what carmakers do not say in the brochure.
This is a real attack by stealth.
DEAFENING SILENCE ON SAFETY
If you go to the official Walkinshaw Amarok rearing station web page, once you’re done dry-retching from the lame hyper-Australian jingoism selling an outdated Argentinian-made safety disgrace, you can also download a 16-page brochure.
And, do you notice what’s missing from both of these ‘resources’? Safety. They just don’t talk about it. At all. And I’d suggest that’s not random or a coincidence.
This vehicle is a proper safety shitbox. I mean, they are very quick to appeal to the male consumer with those awful bonnet decals and claims of a 0-100 acceleration time of 7.3 seconds with 200kW (but not for more than 10 seconds, because overboost).
But no safety pages. None. Not even in the specification fine print. There’s probably a reason.
An Amarok in 2021 is fundamentally the same Amarok crash tested back when Kevin Rudd was PM, the first time.
And I’d suggest the reason is Volkswagen Australia likely wants you to forget advanced safety features on this $90,000 Argentinian fossil which doesn’t even have side-impact, head protecting airbags for your kids. Spend $90k in 2021, have a crash, and end up in a chemically induced coma to protect your brain in the slim hope you’ll wake up and remember your own name. This can be confirmed at Redbook.com.au, which lists all the standard equipment.
Airbags are there for the driver and front passenger, which means frontal crash airbags will hopefully save your bacon. Likewise, airbags on the side for first row occupants means getting T-boned may not kill you in most survivable crashes. But that’s it.
If you’re a kid in row two and dad hits a tree sideways because he overcooks it in his 200kW stallion ute, or if you get T-boned at an intersection, you are on your own. Thanks, Volkswagen. Great work.
How would you ever forgive yourself?
And ANCAP, well done there, you chumps. ANCAP’s testing of Amarok is 10 long years out of date. If you go to ANCAP’s website today and search for Volkswagen ‘current models’ it returns a five-star safety rating for Amarok, which is a disgraceful misrepresentation of the actual relative safety performance on offer if you buy one. Nearly every other popular dual cab is safer than Amarok.
If ANCAP tested that shitbox Amarok today, it would be lucky to receive a one-star rating. One - if the wind is blowing in the right direction that day. The fact that you have to be quite clued-up and know exactly what to look for to join these dots is a disgrace.
Poor little Timmy in the back gets traumatic brain and spinal injuries which plague him for life; but macho Dad is okay…
In 2016, five years ago, and five years after ANCAP awarded Amarok five stars, senior Volkswagen ‘executives’ launched the mighty V6 Amarok. And boy did the press just gag on it.
At the launch, a dude from the late CarAdvice, he asked Dr Jan Michel, a fairly serious Volkswagen international sales wonk, about the glaringly absent Amarok row two airbags.
Given that the platform in respect of 2016 safety standards had a long way to go before being replaced, it was a pertinent question. And this wasn’t some journalistic ambush question to catch him off guard, it was at a sanctioned media event.
Mr Michel responded:
And they’re still working on it, amazingly. It is taking quite some time, isn’t it? And, I’d further suggest, the integration of lifesaving technology such as this is well above the pay grade of the bumper bar factory behind that pile of rotting pallets in Clayton - I mean ‘Walkinshaw Station’.
CONCLUSION
What I’m saying is: Do not be seduced by this bullshit advertising campaign.
Yeah, it’s a quick ute, and it looks awesome. But Amarok is about as authentically Australian as anything else imported from Argentina. And it’s patently, offensively unsafe.
If you’re becoming psychologically engorged and preparing to hump a Volkswagen dealer’s leg in order to procure one, and you’ve got kids, I want you: do not do this to them. That
is my sworn advice. It’s 2021. Kids in row two deserve lifesaving head protection. Every other mainstream dual-cab offers this, buy one of them instead.
Personally, I wonder how many families are buying into this bullshit, on the default expectation that this is a prestige European vehicle, therefore their kids are protected, and unwittingly these people putting the most precious cargo they will ever carry, at risk.
And remember this is a fact. You are not Cypher and this is not The Matrix. Ignorance is definitely not bliss.
Mazda3 should make you reconsider that heavy, impractical SUV or the long list of overpriced prestige German cars. If you’re money smart, you’ll put this sensible, stylish small hatch or sedan on your shortlist for a test drive.