Our national obsession for utilities, especially family-minded dual-cabs, knows no bounds. The market is booming at the moment, and filled with plenty of strong options. Yet surely you’re also keen to know something about what’s coming up next, when and from whom? Here’s the final section of our three-part analysis.

My, how the motoring world goes around.

Back in 2011 when Ford Australia unveiled the T6 Ranger ute that it had designed and engineered all by itself, it flew journalists to some God-forsaken place in South Australia’s Flinders Range for the big reveal.

In among the Rangers at the launch event was a Volkswagen Amarok. The Ford people explained that the VW was there because during the Ranger’s development they had benchmarked their new ute against it.

High praise indeed for the Argentine-built ute produced by Germany’s Volkswagen Group. And the benchmarking worked, too – Ranger immediately became one of the world’s most popular one-tonne utes.

In New Zealand it is the topselling ute, consistently edging out its arch-rival Toyota Hilux. In fact it is the top selling new vehicle full-stop – last year there were 9485 of them registered, well ahead of Hilux’ 7126 sales and way ahead of the most popular passenger vehicle, the Toyota Corolla with its 6804 sales.

And Amarok? The hard truth is that the Volkswagen has struggled. It account for just 1 per cent of the Kiwi commercial market last year, with 653 sales. And that figure was less than 1 per cent of the Amarok’s global sales of 72,500 last year, which in itself was very modest when compared to the hundreds of thousands of sales recorded annually by the likes of Hilux and Ranger.

Given the very high costs of development of any new-generation vehicle, it made sense then that Volkswagen Group would look to forge an alliance with another manufacturer to share development of the next Amarok.

That’s what has happened. Last year the group signed a contract with Ford Motor Company to develop new light commercial vehicles.

In other words, instead of Ford using the Amarok as a benchmark during development of a brand-new T7 Ranger, it is now developing the next-generation Volkswagen ute.

Under the terms of the new alliance, Ford is responsible for creating the two ute models, while Volkswagen Group is responsible for development of both brands’ next-generation vans.

The ute project is being led by Ford’s Australia-based Asia-Pacific Product Development Centre, and it is already well advanced. Unofficial word is that the new Ranger will be launched late next year, and the Amarok slated to arrive in 2022.

Although both companies – Volkswagen particularly – are currently spending a fortune electrifying their future vehicles, this isn’t going to apply to the utes. Instead, Ford is concentrating on developing a range of suitable petrol and diesel engines for Ranger and Amarok.

Media reports out of Australia suggest that instead of being powered by the current 3.2-litre five cylinder diesel, which won’t meet latest emissions regulations, the new Ranger will feature a 3.0-litre single turbocharged Power Stroke diesel V6.

The latest version of this lightweight engine is under the bonnet of the F-150 pick-up in USA, and in that application it offers 186 kilowatts of power and 597 Newton metres of torque.

There’s also talk the Ranger will also get a 2.7-litre twin-turbocharged ‘Nano’ EcoBoost petrol V6 that debuted in 2018 aboard the F-150 in the US, and it develops 242kW and 542kW. But at this stage it seems unlikely this petrol Ranger will become available for New Zealand.

 There’s no word yet as to whether the new Amarok will feature the same powertrains as the Ranger.

Parts 1 and 2 of this series can be found in the news section.