Smart move
In the form of Scout Motors, the Volkswagen Group has a new brand in its portfolio with which it wants to bombard the American market with electric off-roaders. Scout Motors now has a new design boss and it is no coincidence that he has gained the necessary experience at Jeep, among others.
Chris Benjamin can call himself Chief Design Officer of Scout Motors. Benjamin is of course no stranger to the world of car design. He has been behind the drawing board at Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volvo, among others. Scout’s new design boss’s most recent previous employer is perhaps the most relevant: Stellantis. At Stellantis, Chris Benjamin was until recently the head of the department responsible for the design of the interiors of models from Chrysler, Dodge, Ram and … Jeep.
In any case, Chris Benjamin has the necessary Jeep experience.
Scout Motors will develop and produce electric pickups and SUVs for the US market. Those models also have to stand their ground off the beaten track and each seem to get a retro-like, rudimentary look. The Scout brand takes its name from the International Scout, an International Harvester off-roader whose first model appeared on the American market in the early 1960s and of which two generations appeared. Volkswagen acquired the brand name when its truck and bus division Traton became the owner of Navistar in 2020, which previously owned the brand rights. Will Scout also come to Europe? There are no concrete plans for this at the moment. It wouldn’t be the first time a Volkswagen Group brand has ignored the European market. In China, for example, the group has a sub-brand Jetta that you do not know in our part of the world.
In the American state of South Carolina, Scout Motors is going to build a multibillion-dollar factory where up to 200,000 electric cars can see the light of day every year. The first Scout models should leave the factory gates in 2026.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl