GRR Garage: Volkswagen Amarok ‑ throwing Christmas in the bin

One confession to make first, this wasn’t this week, it was actually a few weeks ago. But to let you in on a little secret about the publishing world (both physical and digital), not every car was actually driven the same week as publishing. Hopefully that will explain why there’s a Christmas tree in the photos, rather than any of you thinking that this writer had just left his decorations up for months.

Shock insight into the journalism world over, here’s this week’s tale of pick-up practice. After the Christmas period is over you’re always left with a lot of guff you need to get rid of, so it’s one of those rare times you wish you had a van, on this occasion to take it all down the local tip. Fortunately, we have an Amarok.

The load bay has one of the largest overall areas available in any pickup, and the space between the wheels inside the bay is the widest of any on offer in the UK. It also has a very useful cover fitted for the load bay, which means if you’re filling it with stuff that doesn’t pop up above the sides of the load bay you can shut it all in without needing to think about securing your load in place with such annoying things as bungee chords.

For our foray into the world of tipping we had a varied load, featuring such items as a whole Christmas tree (a tree we collected with the Amarok), an old vacuum cleaner, some gravel and the pole for a blind that fell down so long ago it’s almost embarrassing. This kind of load is hardly a stretch for the Amarok, having been made for much sterner stuff that a Surrey rubbish dump (toughened leaf springs and all that), but driving anything else we would have been sitting with at least something on our laps. Besides, if you being a van to the tip you have to pay for the privilege.

It of course made absolute mincemeat of the whole trip, exposing just why we all really need access to a pick-up with a 3.0-litre V6. How will we ever live without it?

MPG this week: 31.4