In this week’s Ask Nathan:
- Can we please have a Small Volkswagen pickup in the United States?
- Used cars are the only way.
The first question comes from a fan who has a great idea about bringing back the small Volkswagen pickup to the United States.
Q (Via Facebook): RE: Small Volkswagen pickup redux.
It’s hard to watch Volkswagen struggle. They have made a lot of mistakes and they keep pulling the cool cars while giving us boring ones. Yes the I.D. Buzz had poor sales, but people loved it. I think they had the right idea about bringing back the past, but they made it too expensive.
Here’s an idea. The tiny Volkswagen Caddy from the 1980s was a cool little pickup. It was simple, cheap and it was useful. Now is the perfect time to bring a new version here! Make it a hybrid or electric, whatever. I don’t care as long as it has decent range and power. Make it small like the SLATE and include a ton of options. If you make it competitive with SLATE and less than Ford, I think it would slay!
What say you Nathan?
– W. Paulson
A: I’d love to see Volkswagen bring back a genuinely small pickup.
The original Caddy was sold here as the Rabbit Pickup. Based on the first-generation Golf, it had a two-door cab, a roughly six-foot bed and a useful payload of about 1,100 pounds. Volkswagen gave it rear leaf springs to handle the load. Depending on the year, buyers could get a wonderfully slow 1.6-liter diesel with about 52 horsepower or a 1.7-liter gas engine with about 78 ponies. The diesel rewarded your patience with excellent fuel economy. It made a hell of a racket.
I wish Volkswagen could take a Taos, cut off the back, attach a bed, beef up the suspension and call it a day. Developing a safe, useful new pickup is considerably more complicated and expensive. Importing one would present another problem: the longstanding U.S. tariff on light trucks, commonly called the Chicken Tax. A low-priced truck would probably need North American production to have a fighting chance.
Volkswagen already builds the Atlas and ID.4 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which makes that factory an obvious place to start the conversation. But building a pickup there would not mean it had to use the Atlas platform. Volkswagen would still need to find the right architecture, make room to produce it and sell enough trucks to recover the investment. That’s where a cheap little pickup starts becoming less cheap.
Would I drive an affordable electric or hybrid Rabbit Pickup with a practical bed and a long options list? In a heartbeat. Do I expect Volkswagen to build one for us soon? Sadly, no.
I hope I’m wrong. I would enjoy being wrong about this one.
— N
The last question comes from a fan who thinks the BYD Dolphin should be imported into our country.
Q (Via Facebook): RE: Used cars are the only way.
Hi Nate.
I know you make your living off telling us about new cars, but I think used cars are the only way most of us will get through these tough times. Can you review used cars too?
— Anonymous
Here’s some vintage TFL…
A: We do review used cars from time to time.
It’s a fair question. We go to auctions, invite guests to show us their older vehicles, and buy used cars all the time. Some would say we buy too many used cars. Roman has his issues, and the rest of us smile while he explains his latest acquisition. Sometimes those conversations even make it on camera. But I digress.
TFL has been making videos since 2009, so there’s a good chance we reviewed a used car you’re considering when it was new. Those older videos can’t tell you how reliable a particular example will be today, but they can give you a useful sense of what it was like to drive and live with.
Can you dig?
One final point: nearly everyone at TFL Studios buys used cars for themselves. Yes, we also buy a new truck and the occasional car for videos and studio use. We generally keep those for about a year before moving on to something else. Generally.
Thanks for reaching out!
— N
