After many speculations and rumors, VW finally lifted the wraps off its forthcoming 1-tonne pickup truck in the form of a pre-production model simply called ‘Pickup’ at the International Automobile Exhibition in Hanover (public days: September 25 to October 02). The concept gives us a taste of the production model that we’ve become accustomed to knowing it as Robust. Production of the new Pickup will begin in fall 2009 at Volkswagen’s “Pacheco” plant in Argentina. According to VW, the production model will be initially introduced at the end of 2009 to South America, South Africa, Australia and Europe with other markets following shortly after. -Continued

At the Hannover Show, VW previewed a four-door, four-seat version of its 1-tonne pickup truck specially designed as a “Search and Rescue” version (SAR) for protecting swimmers and surfers from worst case scenarios.

Volkswagen claims that this is the first pickup of this sort from any high-volume European automotive manufacturer and that the 5.18 meter long concept vehicle with the 1.55 meter long cargo bed is not based on any familiar model series of the Group. Power comes from the German automaker's latest generation common-rail turbo-diesels (TDI) though VW did not give out any other specific details on the powertrain options.

In terms of design, the Pickup follows the new VW-DNA initially presented by the company’s passenger car division in the form of the Scirocco and the sixth generation Golf though we must say that the German automaker's design team must have taken a sneak peek at the Honda Ridgeline when they were styling pickup's rear-end.