Close, but no Raptor: Ford’s best bits stay off-limits for VW

Volkswagen’s recently-announced Amarok W600 will eschew off-road chops in favour of driver engagement on sealed roads. A driver’s ute, if you will. But the engineers at Walkinshaw were not allowed to use the twin-turbo petrol V6 and coil-sprung rear suspension from the Ranger Raptor for VW’s own apex predator and it appears Ford doesn’t want VW to be able to play with other elements, too.

The Ford-Volkswagen platform-sharing agreement that birthed the current-gen Amarok is, at times, an unequal one.

Case in point: when VW Australia decided to team up with Walkinshaw to create the Amarok W600, a ute that strays from convention to prioritise on-road (rather than off-road) performance, certain ingredients that could have made for a truly spicy apex-slaying load-lugger were not on the menu for VW.

That’s despite the Amarok’s underpinnings and hardware being Ford Ranger-based.

At a media preview of the W600, carsales asked Volkswagen Commercial’s Australian head Nathan Johnson whether the potent 292kW twin-turbo petrol V6 of the Ranger Raptor or its coil-sprung rear suspension was ever a contender for the Walkinshaw-tuned Amarok.

The answer? “Unfortunately that was just not available”.

But while the 184kW 3.0-litre turbo-diesel V6 that will power the W600 might be short 108kW versus the Raptor-spec petrol bent-six, its 600Nm torque max shades the Raptor’s motor by 17Nm.

It’s also, according to Volkswagen Australia, more in tune with what its customers want from a performance ute and can tow heavier loads than the Raptor.

“Starting from the beginning of this project, if you had a completely blank piece of paper, there were no limitations to what we could have done,” Johnson told carsales.

“We could have gone [2.3L] petrol, we could have gone bi-turbo [diesel], we could have gone V6 [diesel].

“But, as we’ve gone through the process, understanding the data, understanding the demand, speaking to customers, getting all of that feedback, it naturally leads you down the path to ending up with the V6 [diesel].

“We want a halo model, and our customers find Amarok Walkinshaw and V6 synonymous with each other.

“They still want that underlying ute capability, that towing ability, payload and offroad ability, and they see V6 [diesel] as the top-spec engine. There was no other option [but V6], if you look at that data,” he said.

And with the previous-generation Walkinshaw-tuned Amarok, the W580, also sporting V6 diesel power under the bonnet, positive owner feedback indicated that continuing that strategy was the right one for VW.

“We are a V6 diesel brand predominantly,” said VW Australia’s acting general manager of communications, Daniel DeGasperi.

“And that’s been around with the previous-generation Amarok as well as the new generation model.

“With 600 Newton metres of torque we haven’t had one Amarok customer tell us that’s an undernourished level of torque or performance.

He said the focus was therefore on “…what chassis upgrades can level up to the engine, rather than the other way around.”

Ford might not be letting Volkswagen near the really juicy stuff, but Volkswagen and Walkinshaw are determined to turn their interpretation of a sports ute into a true asphalt-scorcher – a real rarity and point of difference in the overcrowded dual-cab ute market.

Something else that also appears to be off the menu is anything related to Ford’s recently-arrived Ranger Super Duty.

Asked whether Volkswagen would like to leverage some of the ultra-rugged engineering that’s been applied to the Super Duty ute, Johnson said that no discussions had taken place with Ford about unlocking any of the beefcake Ranger’s hardware for the Amarok.

So a 4.5-tonne towing capacity will not eventuate for the Amarok.

With Volkswagen resolutely targeting more profitable private buyers, it’s perhaps not surprising that VW isn’t pursuing Super Duty hardware for its Amarok.

Ford, however, is the opposite, and generates a significant chunk of its sales from supplying the kinds of fleet customers that the Ranger Super Duty is squarely targeted at, such as mine site customers.

Could Ford eventually let Volkswagen dip deeper into the “RA” Ranger’s parts bin? Maybe, but while both companies are happy to remain bedfellow with things like the Ranger/Amarok and Transit Custom/Transporter, there appears to be several red lines in the tech-sharing agreement between them.

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