DON'T BUY: Volkswagen Amarok V6 W-Series | Auto Expert John Cadogan

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My very good friends at Volkswagen have teamed up with Australia’s premier antique bumper bar factory in beautiful, scenic Clayton, and they’ve made their outdated death-trap dual-cab even faster.

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. See, if you go to the official Walkinshaw Amarok web page, once you’re done dry-retching from the caricature of fabled ‘Strayan jingoistic guff orbiting this Argentinian-made museum exhibit, you can also download a 16-page brochure.

And, you know what’s missing from both of these (quote-unquote) ‘resources’? Safety. They just don’t talk about it. At all. And I’d suggest that’s not an arbitrary exclusion.

This vehicle is a proper safety disgrace.

Forget advanced safety features … this $90,000 Argentinian VW doesn’t even have side impact airbag head protection for the kids sitting in row two. $90k. In 2021. This can be confirmed at Redbook.com.au - which lists all the standard equipment.

Airbag - driver. Airbag - passenger. (That means frontal crash airbags.) Airbag - Side for 1st row occupants (Front). And that’s it, in the domain of airbags. If you’re a kid in row 2 and dad hits a tree sideways because he overcooks it, or you get T-boned at an intersection, you are on your own. Thanks, Volkswagen.

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 ANCAP’s testing of Amarok is 10 long years out of date. 10 years. 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 gross misrepresentation of the actual relative safety performance on offer if you buy one, compared with any other popular dual cab.

If they tested that 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.

In 2016, five years ago, one year after Lenny Kravitz was memorably commissioned as a kind of Dieselgate ‘No More Gaps’ in New York, and five years after ANCAP awarded Amarok five stars, senior Volkswagen execs launched the mighty V6 Amarok.

At the launch, a dude from CarAdvice, which is now dead because Nine has always been hazy about competent decision-making, he asked Dr Jan Michel - who is essentially a fairly serious Volkswegian international sales wonk - about the glaringly absent Amarok row two airbags.

As in: Glaringly absent from the platform when viewed through the prism of 2016 safety standards. Mr Michel responded:

“We are working on it.” - Dr Jan Michel, International Sales Director, VW Commercial

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’.

What I’m saying is: Do not be seduced by this advertising campaign. Yeah - it’s quick, and it looks awesome. But Amarok is about as authentically ‘Strayan as anything else imported from Argentina. And it’s patently unsafe.

If you’re preparing to engage with a Volkswagen dealer in order to procure one, and you’ve got kids - do not do this to them, would be my advice. It’s 2021. Kids in row two deserve lifesaving head protection. Every other m

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