Audi has built some genuinely weird machines over the years. There was the bizarrely proportioned A2, a car so ahead of its time that even time hasn’t caught up. They once sold a Q7 with a diesel V12, because apparently six cylinders weren’t obnoxious enough. A five-cylinder R8 nearly happened, and somewhere in Ingolstadt’s archives sits a one-off RS4 Avant wearing a TT body like an ill-fitting suit.
But pickups? That’s where Gernot Döllner, Audi’s current CEO, draws the line. In a recent interview, he shut down any lingering fantasies about an Audi pickup with the kind of finality usually reserved for rejecting bad wine. “A pickup is the last concept I could imagine as Audi”, he said, before adding the corporate escape clause: “One should never say no. But at the moment… it’s the last segment I could imagine.”
This marks a sharp departure from his predecessor Markus Duesmann, who in 2022 teased the possibility with a vague “we’re thinking about it”. Looking back, Duesmann was likely referring to the Activesphere concept, unveiled in early 2023.
That vehicle was essentially a high-riding SUV with a glass rear panel that slid over the roof to reveal a cargo bed. Part luxury wagon, part identity crisis. It was interesting, sure, but nobody seriously expected it to reach production.
With Döllner now firmly closing the door, any hope for an Audi-badged version of the upcoming Scout Terra can be safely buried. Scout, Volkswagen Group’s new electric pickup brand set to launch production next year in Blythewood, South Carolina, will offer battery-electric and range-extender options.
It’s almost amusing that a company willing to experiment with diesel V12s and TT-bodied wagons considers pickups beneath its dignity. Perhaps there’s something about cargo beds and towing capacity that clashes with Vorsprung durch Technik. Or maybe, just maybe, Audi looked at the market and realized that building luxury pickups is a very specific kind of madness.
