VW's 4Motion commercials reach local market

Volkswagen now has a seven-seat van configured to meet the needs of ambulance operators and companies in the hospitality and tourism industries.

Australia is one of the rare markets in the world where a significant but untapped portion of the market for peoplemovers wants all-wheel drive and a self-shifting transmission.

"The Australian market, for van business, is about 50 per cent automatic," explained Volkswagen's commercial vehicles Director, Phil Clark, during a break from a familiarisation drive of the new variants through southern Germany last week.

"The Europeans really struggle to come to grips with that -- even our own factory."

Despite the resistance from Europe, the DSG automatic transmission option for the Multivan 4Motion is expected to be very important to the Aussie arm of Volkswagen when the T5 (Transporter and Multivan) models with 4Motion all-wheel drive go on sale later this month.

The Volkswagen Multivan variants will be powered by a 132kW twin-turbo diesel driving through either a six-speed manual transmission or a seven-speed DSG to all four wheels. Volkswagen has specified the 'GP' upgrade of the T5 range (from February this year) with a Haldex drive system for the 4Motion models.

The Multivan's commercial sibling, the Transporter, will also be made available with the same combination of 132kW twin-turbo engine, six-speed manual or optional seven-speed DSG transmission and 4Motion all-wheel drive.

It's the auto variant of the all-paw Transporter that Clark sees appealing to the NSW Ambulance Service, due to that fleet's need for auto-equipped vehicles that can work in snowy and other low-traction environments. The NSW service operates different sizes of ambulances, unlike other states.

Asked whether Volkswagen could penetrate ambulance fleets in the other states with the T5, Clark was doubtful.

"The biggest issue in other states is their philosophy on what size vehicle they want. Most of them want to run a two-bed vehicle only, on their fleet -- which is a Crafter or Sprinter-size vehicle. And that's the difference, whereas in New South Wales, they run single-bed [vehicles]. Half their fleet is single-bed and half is dual-bed."

In Victoria, the Mercedes Sprinter is the vehicle of choice and the Melbourne Ambulance Service is yet to be convinced of cost efficiencies by moving to the smaller Volkswagen T5, says Clark. 

Due to the NSW Ambulance Service being Volkswagen's largest fleet customer for commercial vehicles, it's most likely that the DSG variant of the Transporter 4Motion will outsell the manual variant by a considerable margin.

"We might expect to sell -- across the whole T5 range -- 10 to 15 per cent in a year, including peoplemovers," said Clark.

"The biggest thing for us is it opens up the market with automatic, because from a peoplemover perspective, you've got things like tourism operators up The Cape... Applications like down the Snowy Mountains and places like that..."

4Motion models will cost an extra $3500 over the cost of front-wheel drive Transporters and Multivans, with the DSG option costing a further $3000.

Look out for our first drive soon...

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