2022 Volkswagen Amarok W580S V6 review: The 200kW brute ute

CarExpert

200kW of power from a meaty V6 diesel engine. The Volkswagen Amarok W80S is a road-tuned version of the Volkswagen Amarok designed to give you a bit more performance from your work ute/bakkie/pickup truck. Paul Maric takes it for a drive to see if it's any good and suitable for having a fun drive in.  Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  More Volkswagen content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/volkswagen More Volkswagen Amarok content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/volkswagen/amarok   Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior 1:13 Interior 4:25 Infotainment 6:10 Safety Tech 7:47 Practicality 8:40 On the road 12;02 0-100km/h 14:10 Verdict 19:15  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #volkswagen #amarok #review

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So dual-cab utes are all the craze in Australia at the moment.

00:04 And while this one here, the Volkswagen Amarok, has been out for ages now, it's one of the longest

00:09 standing utes on the market, Volkswagen has been doing some local tuning here in Australia,

00:14 and they've developed this, which is the Amarok W580S. W stands for Walkinshaw, the company that

00:21 has helped do some tuning here, and then 580S is the designation for the V6 diesel. It's priced at

00:27 a little over $80,000. If that's too expensive, the whole Amarok range kicks off at a little over

00:34 $45,000. This competes with things like the Ford Ranger, the Toyota Hilux, the Isuzu D-Max. There

00:40 are a litany of competitors in the dual-cab ute segment in Australia. Today we're going to do a

00:45 detailed review of this. Now, you may be wondering, why is Paul not on his off-road track? Well,

00:50 that's because this is a road-focused version of the Amarok. So we're here on a road track.

00:56 If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of the review, you can use the time codes on the screen,

01:00 or if you're on YouTube, scroll down and use the chapters below. And if you haven't done so already,

01:04 subscribe to our channel, press the bell icon, that's going to tell you every single time we

01:07 drive a car with black stripes. Now let's talk design. You've got five external colours to pick

01:14 from. All but white is an additional $710. So the W580S brings with it stripes. You can see them

01:22 here on the bonnet. You've got this bonnet protector. This has the full black package as

01:27 well. So offsetting the body colour, you have these piano black highlights and then black

01:32 sections down the bottom as well. Tell you what, the design here of the Amarok, despite the fact

01:37 this is like 11 or 12 years old now here in Australia, I think it still actually looks like

01:42 a really cool ute. Now, if you don't know, Volkswagen will be sharing a platform with

01:47 Ford on the Ranger for the next generation of the Amarok. So we expect to see that here later this

01:51 year or early next year. So it will be kind of same, same but different. They'll apply their

01:55 own flair and hopefully they continue with these cool sort of special editions. So being the V6

02:00 diesel, you get the V6 badge up the top here. Byzen and headlights, that's how old this car is

02:06 with LED daytime running lights. You also have LED fog lights down the bottom there and we'll

02:11 whip around to the side. Now this is where things get interesting. You've got these wheel arch

02:16 extensions here and they contain this tyre. So it's a Pirelli Scorpion. It's kind of like an

02:21 off-road tyre with on-road focus. So it's a tyre that you can use on-road and gives this car a

02:27 little bit more traction. So 275mm wide on each end, 20-inch alloy wheels, quite like the alloy

02:33 wheel design. So you've got that sort of matte black finish to it. Volkswagen caps over here on

02:38 the lug nuts and then the Volkswagen logo in the centre there. The suspension has changed in this

02:44 and this is part of the tuning program that Walkinshaw did. So they've gone with a 35mm damper

02:49 which is around 10% bigger than the standard car. That gives them more variability to tune the

02:54 vehicle across different surfaces. So we'll be testing that out today when we take it for a spin

02:58 and I'll be keen to see how it goes over our sine waves to see how well it settles over that. It's

03:03 also 50mm higher at the front due to that suspension setup that they've gone for. You've

03:08 got a V6 badge over here, more 580mm with Walkinshaw on the side there so everyone knows what

03:13 you're driving. You've got these rock sliders down the side of the car as well, privacy glass.

03:19 You have body coloured sailplane that comes standard, more of that wheel arch extension

03:23 here and then come around to the back. Now before I show you all this stuff, have a look under there,

03:28 you've got a tuned twin exhaust system so I'll be keen to see whether that sounds any cool and

03:33 it's got the side exit pipes which is very American of that setup. So another Walkinshaw

03:39 badge just here, then you've got Amarok in black lettering with a big Volkswagen logo. You have a

03:44 3.5 tonne brake to towing capacity which is good news, normally when they soup these utes up you

03:48 lose your towing capacity but this retains that. Now inside the box here you've got an Amarok badge,

03:53 a 12V outlet, some hooks, payload comes in at just under 850kg and then in terms of the

04:00 dimensions of the tray, it has a load length of a little over 1550mm and then you have just over

04:05 1200mm between the wheel arches. It also has a torsion bar as well which means getting this up

04:10 and down is a little bit easier. Now let me know what you think about the design of the W580S

04:17 and do you reckon $81,000 is too much to pay for a ute that is 10 years old? Let me know what you

04:24 think. Right so we're inside the Amarok, let's start off with the key, lock, unlock, then on the

04:30 back Volkswagen and it's a flip out key and that is because it's not proximity sensing, you've got

04:36 to press a button to unlock it and then once you're inside you have a keyhole so it is very old

04:41 school. Okay so let's talk about the design. Now I've entered this in the frame of mind that this

04:47 car is 11, 12 years old now for the Australian market so it is very old compared to most of

04:55 its other competitors and that's why you'll see things like these very scratchy surfaces all over

04:59 the place, tiny infotainment system and barely any safety technology that I'll get to in a second.

05:04 But if you keep that in mind I still think that it is nicely presented so everything is where you

05:11 need it, the climate controls are easy to reach, everything is just sort of in the spot you'd

05:16 expect it to be in and I think until the new Amarok comes, the one that's going to be sharing

05:20 a platform with Ranger, this is going to tide them over. So what are the touch points like?

05:25 It's firmish and then firm on the door. How firm are they? Well we've got our

05:30 durometer, we've tested the main surfaces in this cabin. If you want to see how this car compares

05:35 to others that we've tested before, have a look at the link in the description. By the way,

05:38 somebody asked us how this actually works. It just measures from zero to 100 where 100 is

05:43 maximum hardness and zero is super soft so that's what the numbers on the screen mean.

05:48 Now what about build quality? That's a little bit wonky there but the rest of it feels pretty

05:55 solid. Let me know, have you owned an Amarok? I'm sure some of you have. Let me know in the

05:58 comment section below what's it been like to live with and has it been reliable? Door test.

06:02 Let me get rid of that first.

06:05 Sounds nice and solid. Let's talk about infotainment. You'll almost need like a

06:14 magnifying glass to see the screen. It's 6.3 inches, it's absolutely tiny but I guess it

06:21 comes with all the features that you need plus a CD player. I haven't seen a CD player in a while. So

06:25 inbuilt satellite navigation and then in terms of audio you have AM, FM, DAB plus digital radio

06:34 and that's all through a six speaker sound system. Sound system is kind of okay, nothing too special

06:39 but you can mirror your smartphone here and this is probably what makes this such a usable system

06:44 because it means that you can just put whatever you want on your smartphone and then it kind of

06:49 makes the infotainment system and its age obsolete. So I'll show you what Apple CarPlay looks like.

06:54 Both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are wired, nice and fast, quick and easy to use. You also

07:00 have voice recognition that interacts with the phone there as well. I'll show you what Android

07:05 Auto looks like. So again, full screen integration and nice and quick and easy to use. The other

07:12 cool thing as well, it has a memory card here so that is for the satellite navigation but you've

07:16 got another slot you can load pictures and stuff like that and if you want, I don't know why you'd

07:23 want to have pictures on your screen but you can do that and it's all fun. Now there is one more

07:29 screen ahead of the driver. It's just a tiny little display that has your trip computer information

07:33 and then when you do engage some of the off-road settings it appears both on the sides here with

07:38 the tacho and the speedo and then you get some information in the center of the display there

07:42 as well but it is a pretty basic setup here in terms of infotainment. Now safety technology. This

07:49 has virtually no safety technology so you've got no autonomous emergency braking, no lane

07:56 departure warning, no lane keeping assistant, no blind spot monitoring, you don't even have airbags

08:00 for the second row. So from a safety point of view this car is thoroughly disappointing. It did

08:05 score five stars when it was crash tested in 2011 but that was over 10 years ago so yeah it is

08:11 disappointing they haven't put any effort into updating it on the safety front. Yes there is

08:16 another model coming but it is worth keeping that in mind if you're going to have kids in the car

08:19 there is no airbag coverage for the second row. But you do have front and rear parking sensors

08:24 and a reverse view camera. I'll show you what that looks like. There it is there. So yeah camera is

08:29 not too bad. It's got guidelines as well and then on top of that you have front and rear sonars

08:34 there that show you exactly what's going on. The view is fine. It's actually quite a decent

08:39 quality camera there so that's not too bad. Now what about your practicality and we'll start off

08:43 with the connectivity options. So you have one USB port down the front here that's used for your

08:48 smartphone mirroring and then an auxiliary outlet. Two 12 volt outlets here. In terms of phone storage

08:53 your phone can kind of live anywhere really. There's no wireless phone charging but there's a

08:57 big old pad down there. You can also fit it in the cup holders should you wish. Now speaking of cup

09:03 holders, coffee cup, how does that go? It doesn't quite reach the bottom so if you have a small coffee

09:08 cup like I do it's going to be a little bit tricky for that. There's no teeth there either but we'll

09:12 have a look at how it goes with our water bottle. It's fine but without the teeth it sort of moves

09:16 around a little bit. Plenty of storage inside the doors. I'm curious it's going to fit a big bottle.

09:21 Not there but yes inside the door no dramas at all. Now what about the rest of your storage? So

09:27 center console here there's barely any room in there and that's because it has a traditional

09:31 handbrake that eats into that space. Now the glove box that's positively small there but you do have

09:37 this storage up the top that has another 12 volt outlet and then you have a sunglasses holder as

09:42 well. So what about your comfort that's important while you're driving around in your big truck?

09:47 So dual zone automatic climate control up the front here. You have heated seats for the front

09:54 row. The seats are electrically adjustable. That means you can go forwards, backwards, backwards

09:59 can go forwards, backwards. The base can come up and down like that. You also have lumbar support

10:06 as well so it's a pretty impressive seat setup. It's quite a comfy seat too. It hugs you in nicely.

10:10 In terms of the seat design you've got the big Walkinshaw logo up the top there and then the

10:14 seat itself is sort of just nice. It just hugs you in and it's comfy for a long distance drive.

10:20 Now your steering. It has both tilt and reach adjustment and then on our reach test all of

10:26 this stuff is easy to reach while you're driving. Now before I show you how much room there is let's

10:30 have a look at the storage options. So if you lift the seat it's interesting there's what you would

10:36 assume is storage under here but the seat lifts out of the way so you can store longer items that

10:41 don't have to rest on your fancy Vienna leather. Both sides lift up and both of them have that

10:46 little hook to get all that into place. Now behind here is your jack and other recovery items but the

10:51 problem is you need two people to open it. So Sean can you carefully grab that end at the same time?

10:58 There it is. So once that's back you can see your jack in here and then I don't even know what that

11:03 is it's like a little soft case of some sort behind there and you'll also find your top tether points

11:09 here as well. All right let me hop in. Got a handle. All right yes now this is what I remember

11:15 with Amarok. It is really wide so you have plenty of room to sit with your mates sideways but

11:20 you well and truly wedge yourself into that seat when you're sort of back here. You can see I have

11:26 no knee room. Toe room's great though and headroom is pretty good as well. In terms of other creature

11:31 comforts there really isn't much back here. You've got a 12 volt outlet. There's no USB charging

11:35 ports, no air vents. Your bottle can go down here in one of those cup holders or alternatively it

11:41 can go inside the door pocket and outside of that you really don't have much else. You've got ISOFIX

11:47 points here to match those top tethers and finally our window test. Let's see how it goes.

11:55 Oh look at that old school ute. Window goes down all the way. Win-win.

11:58 So I've just hit the road in the Amarok W580S. It is so wet out here. It's just been bucketing

12:09 down all morning so yeah keep that in mind when you see the surrounds here. Now powering this,

12:14 it's one of the few utes in this segment. Actually I think it's the only ute in the segment at the

12:19 moment that is powered by a V6 diesel. There was for a brief period the Mercedes-Benz X-Class but

12:24 now I think this is the only one. Now it's a 3 litre turbocharged V6 diesel. It's able to produce

12:30 200 kilowatts of power briefly on overboost so that occurs when you go to full throttle and

12:35 that's matched with 580 newton meters of torque which is a very nice big serve of torque there,

12:44 especially in a vehicle like this that has permanent all-wheel drive. So when you are driving

12:48 it you really do feel that push in the back. It's not like a lot of the other utes in the segment

12:52 that are rear-wheel drive until you activate all-wheel drive. What does all that feel like

12:56 behind the wheel? Give this a punch. Yeah look it feels good. There is a fair bit of lag there

13:02 though so if I slow this back down again and then we just give it a punch, waiting, waiting, waiting,

13:07 then it goes. So there is a little bit of lag but once it's moving it's moving. That's all

13:13 made into an 8-speed torque converter automatic so no dual clutches here. Gearbox is fast enough

13:18 but you will notice if you do catch it napping it takes a little bit of time to get its thoughts

13:23 into gear. Volkswagen claims a combined fuel economy of 9.5 litres per 100 k's. We are currently

13:30 sitting on 12.1 so a little bit higher than the average claim but near enough. Now one thing you

13:40 will notice is every time I go for that throttle there is a little bit of noise in the cabin. It is

13:46 a fairly noisy engine. There is a twin exhaust system out the back and I am curious what it

13:53 sounds like from the outside because when you get onto the throttle here it actually sounds pretty

13:58 good. It sounds like it's actually doing stuff. It doesn't sound like a rattly four-cylinder diesel

14:02 but I'm hoping it sounds good on the outside as well. They've gone to such a big effort there

14:06 with that exhaust system. Now Volkswagen claims a 0-100 time of 7.3 seconds. This is how it went

14:16 up against our stopwatch. Keep in mind it is wet outside.

14:19 Now let's talk about the ride. So, Walcon sure did the tuning on the ride here to differentiate

14:38 it from just the standard Amarok and as part of that they've kind of firmed it up to give it that

14:45 sporty feel and we're coming up to our sine waves here which I'll attack at country highway speeds

14:52 or the maximum speed you can do here in Australia which is 130. Let's dial up the speed a little bit.

14:58 It is pretty floaty. It's interesting because at low speed it actually has a fair bit of

15:08 firmness to the ride and I mean you're kind of dealing with a platform here that is quite old.

15:14 It's leaf sprung at the rear. There's only so much you can do with it but then when you hit

15:18 those continuous undulations at speed it starts to get really floaty over those. So look the ride's

15:25 good but I really don't think it's amazing. I think there could be a little bit of work done

15:28 to that to either smooth it out or I don't know it's kind of a little too sporty at the moment

15:33 but doesn't have the sportiness at the top end of town. Yeah there isn't a sport mode so to speak

15:41 but there is a sport mode for the gearbox. I've just slotted it into that. Makes it a little

15:46 more eager to dial back through the gears and to give you everything that you need.

15:50 Yeah even with these tyres it you know it actually I was driving around here this morning when it was

16:01 dry and it actually had a fair bit of traction and that's the thing when you're talking a V6

16:06 diesel this piles on the speed pretty quickly but without traction and grip you're kind of nowhere

16:11 and these tyres they've fitted to it in the dry they're actually really impressive but here in the

16:15 wet they are just a little bit sketchy. This surface isn't fantastic so you know you've got

16:20 to give it to that as well but look for the most part when you do dial up the speed it actually

16:25 has an impressive amount of traction in the drive for what is a giant dual cab view that sits pretty

16:31 high off the ground. Okay let me put this back into just the normal driving mode. Now let's talk

16:37 about road noise. So I spoke about the engine being a little noisy but what's it like in terms

16:41 of road noise? Surprisingly there isn't a great deal of noise coming in through the tyres. They

16:45 are technically an all-terrain tyre but even here at highway speed it's not that bad. I was expecting

16:50 to hear a whole lot more noise coming into the cabin especially on this course chip stuff.

16:54 A little bit of wind noise coming in over the mirrors there but for the most part it's actually

16:59 not too bad in here. Visibility out of the cabin so out the front there is excellent. It's a massive

17:04 window. The wing mirrors are massive and I love that because you can really see down the sides of

17:08 the car there. Visibility out the back is good as well. Now let's talk about steering as well. This

17:13 is one of the things that ultimately they can't do a great deal with because it's still a hydraulically

17:19 assisted steering rack and here about centre and even just off centre there's really barely any

17:27 steering feel so there's a whole lot of play in that wheel and once the speeds do start to pick

17:31 up you really do notice that there isn't a great deal of feel through that steering wheel so that's

17:35 obviously something that'll get addressed when they move to the Ford Ranger platform because it

17:39 uses an EPAS system, an electrically assisted steering rack, but here for the moment you're

17:43 not really going to feel a whole lot of what's going on under the body there.

17:46 Now let's talk about off-road specs. I mentioned earlier that yes we normally film

17:54 our four-wheel drives and off-road cars at a dedicated location but I thought we'd come out

17:57 here today because this is the road-focused version but the Amarok is actually pretty

18:02 capable off-road. Click up here to watch our previous review of the Amarok that was off-road

18:06 and you can see some clever stuff like the off-road mode here that adjusts the braking

18:10 performance depending on the surface but in terms of your off-road specifications it has an approach

18:15 angle of 28 degrees and a departure angle of 23.6 degrees. They are the angles that you can

18:21 hit before you damage the car at the front and rear respectively. You have a weighting depth of

18:26 500 millimetres and a ground clearance of 258 mil and that is the amount of space you have beneath

18:32 the car before it starts hitting things and finally instead of low range you just have the

18:37 rear diff lock and the eight-speed auto is configured to have a really short first gear

18:41 that kind of mimics a low range transfer case. It does an okay job off-road we've never really had

18:46 any issues with the Amarok, it has one of the best electronics packages on the market, it really just

18:51 varies that stability and traction control to keep you out of situations where you're likely to get stuck.

18:56 Now what's it like at low speeds? Well turning circle is just over 12.4 metres which is pretty

19:02 big and because it's a hydraulically assisted steering rack the steering is pretty heavy when

19:07 it comes to parking but you do get front and rear parking sensors that makes getting it into tight

19:11 space is pretty easy. So the W580S, what do we reckon? Look to be honest I think it is really

19:22 starting to show its age. I don't like that it has a huge lack of safety technology. The ride I also

19:28 don't really love either, I just think it's a little, it's neither here nor there, it sort of

19:32 doesn't sit on any particular tangent so it is a little bit hard to place it but what does excite

19:38 me is they've been able to do this here in Australia and it is hard to get these smaller

19:42 engineering programs off the ground and I'm hoping that once the new Amarok comes out with all of the

19:47 safety features and all of the bells and whistles that Ford engineers have been working on on the

19:52 side with the Volkswagen guys that they can give this to Walkinshaw and they can come up with

19:56 something fun. So let's see how that goes but yeah for the moment I reckon 80 grand is probably a

20:02 little bit rich for it. So let me know in the comments section, have you bought one? Is there

20:06 something that I'm missing on it? Let me know your thoughts about the Amarok and the 580S in general.

20:11 Now if you did enjoy this video please make sure you share it with your mates and if you haven't

20:14 done so already subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon but until next time take it easy.

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