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Pickup trucks and SUVs continue to dominate the North American market by a wide margin, and Volkswagen is said to be aiming for a larger slice of that space. A fresh Reuters report claims the carmaker is preparing to introduce a pickup truck built in the United States, with a strong focus on the American market.

The Volkswagen Group is currently going through a major financial restructuring, with tens of thousands of jobs and dozens of vehicle programmes under threat, and a revised U.S. market strategy is seen as central to its long-term recovery. According to a source from Volkswagen cited by Reuters earlier this week, a U.S.-focused Volkswagen pickup truck forms part of that strategy. Even so, buyers should not expect it anytime soon, as the model, which is reportedly set to be manufactured in the U.S.A., likely at the Chattanooga plant that now has extra capacity following the decision to stop building ID.4 EVs there, is not expected to reach North American showrooms until the end of the decade.

Volkswagen has already been selling a pickup truck, the Amarok, in Europe, Australia, Africa and Latin America since 2010. The German brand has never offered a full-fledged truck in the United States, although it did sell a Golf with a pickup bed in the 1980s. Still, company leadership reportedly sees strong potential in the profitability of this consistently popular body style. Reuters says Thomas Schaffer, head of the Volkswagen brand, in particular considers the pickup truck important to Volkswagen’s future financial stability.

This is not the first occasion on which Volkswagen executives have hinted at a pickup for the U.S. Earlier this year, Dr. Kjell Gruner, then President and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, made it clear that the company was evaluating pickup trucks. Earlier reports had centred on Volkswagen bringing a mid-size pickup to the American market, but Gruner said that the key factor in the development process was the size of the market.

“Of course we look at that, you know, that C [segment] pickup or B [segment] pickup, etc., and we look at how those segments are developing. And I wouldn't want to rule it out at all,” Gruner told CarBuzz in April.

Now, Marco Schubert, a member of Volkswagen’s board of management and former head of sales at Audi, is being sent to the U.S. to replace Gruner as part of the company’s wider transformation. It remains unclear whether Volkswagen will engineer the truck entirely on its own or work with another manufacturer. If it does choose to collaborate, Ford appears to be a plausible partner. Volkswagen already shares its MEB electric vehicle platform with Ford in Europe, while the Amarok also shares its platform with the Ford Ranger. In any case, both Volkswagen followers and pickup enthusiasts may need to be ready to see a German-brand pickup on U.S. roads by the end of 2030.