What we need in this world is more weirdness, and Volkswagen is bringing a bit of that to Brazil. At the São Paulo International Motor Show, the company showed off a nearly production-ready concept truck called the Tarok, which features a variable length bed. Fun!
You may remember the Chevrolet Avalanche’s rear cab-back, which could fold down, allowing you to effectively extend the usable bed length into the cab. Chevy called that a “midgate,” and the idea is essentially the same as what’s behind the coolest feature of VW’s Tarok Concept, which the brand says will soon be launched in Brazil “with barely any changes.”
VW describes how the 2,200 pound payload-carrying variable loading area works, writing in its press release:
The floor space can be extended by opening the tailgate or using the brand new mechanism that allows the bottom of the passenger cab rear panel to be folded down. As a result, drivers can also use the back of the cab to transport extra-long items.
The result is that the truck morphs from the image above to this:
Under the hood of the concept is a 1.4-liter, 148 horsepower gasoline engine set up to work on pure ethanol or ethanol blend. Mated to that engine is a six-speed automatic and a full-time 4Motion all-wheel drive system.
The production model, VW says, will launch with a 2.0-liter diesel with the same power output.
As far as the platform underpinning the little four-door truck, Motoring reports that the pickup utilizes is a unibody design based on VW’s ubiquitous MQB platform that underpins everything from the Polo to the Tiguan to the Atlas.
A unibody pickup with a bed that extends into the cab? That’s just cool, so it’s a damn shame that Motor Authority has it on good, um, authority from VW that this truck will not come to the U.S.
Too bad. We could use more small, cool trucks like this one.