Volkswagen to bring back Scout brand

It’s worth looking particularly closely at Rivian when regarding VW’s plans here, given that these trucks won’t have Volkswagen badging. The marque hopes to harness some of the curiosity around Rivian, as a new-to-market innovator, by putting these trucks out sans VW badging. Yes, Scout will be its own thing – an independent company with its own designs, engineering, and manufacturing, albeit with a lot of the parts sharing and platform synergies you’d expect of a brand under Volkswagen.

The plan comes off the back of the strengthening of Volkswagen’s position in the US over the past couple of years. Scout is intended to galvanise the Group’s presence, as an all-American concept-to-production vehicle offering.

“The company we will establish this year will be a separate unit and brand within the Volkswagen Group to be managed independently,” said Arno Antlitz.

“This aligns with the new Group steering model – small units that act agilely and have access to our tech platforms to leverage synergies.”

As for what we can expect to see from these vehicles? From the drawings, it looks like Bronco meets Touareg for the SUV and Amarok meets Rivian for the pickup.

The Scout badging came as a part of Volkswagen’s purchase of Navistar, which was the successor to the International Harvester brand. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the Scout-badged SUV was a rival to the Ford Bronco and Chevy Blazer. Are you excited to see the return of Scout in the US? We can hear the calls to bring them to Europe already…