Recently, spy photos of the GM mid-size twins testing alongside a VW Amarok have surfaced. This is a bit of a head-scratcher since the Amarok isn’t offered in the U.S. nor is it GM’s top competitor in the mid-size market.

What is GM thinking?

Quite often, companies will test their products against the competition. However, you normally see this competition being between similar trucks in the same market. The VW Amarok isn’t sold in the U.S. and, therefore, isn’t a competitor in this market.

When we first saw these pictures, we can’t quite figure this one out. We called a former, long-time truck engineer who said the pictures make a lot sense.

General Motors has a proving ground in Milford, MI. This facility is home to the majority of GM’s truck experts and they bring in all sorts of vehicles to test out.

For the record, the Chevy Colorado looks to be their new diesel model. The VW Amarok is also a diesel.

In the case of the VW Amarok, the Chevy Colorado competes against it in other areas of the world. The engineers, most likely, took the turns driving the truck, comparing notes and then collaborated to see what they could do to the Colorado to make sure it was competitive.



Why No Tacoma?

While testing out the Colorado/Canyon against global competition makes sense, why isn’t the Tacoma and/or Hilux in the picture. This would make the most amount of sense. The reason may be really simple, they didn’t have enough drivers/engineers to test them all at once.

The practical reason of running out of bodies to test vehicles at once makes sense. However, we can’t help but to wonder why we don’t see more spy photos of the Tacoma testing next to the Colorado.

While it is possible GM does test those trucks against each other inside their facility, one does wonder how competitive GM sees their products against one another and vice versa.

After speaking with various Toyota officials at auto shows, our sense is Toyota doesn’t view the Colorado/Canyon as true competitors. They see customers in the segment differently than GM does.

In the end, these pictures are just interesting. Does GM know something about VW that we don’t? Will VW bring the Amarok to the U.S.? Is the Amarok competitive as it is or does VW need to throw a longer bed on it? Lots of interesting, unanswered questions.

What do you think?