The Gadgets Page

I love it when rumors fly. I like to catch them with a butterfly net and put them all into one big cage. You are looking at a teaser that Volkswagen has released for the VW Atacama. It was based on their Crafter model, which is competition for the Sprinter. That means it has the body of a van that is meant to trek across the city delivering flowers or medical supplies.

It is also rumored to be an off-roading vehicle. With a 2.5L 5-cylinder turbo diesel (164 horse-power), a 6-speed transmission, and 285/55 R 20 off-road tires, it might be good enough for some of the easier trails. Whether it can tackle off-road trails rated above a four probably depends more on the driver than the vehicle. It looks a little top-heavy, though, so I wonder how it would perform.

Finally, there are rumors floating around that it is also a camping van. Any hippies who are fondly reminded of the Westfalia-converted camping vans made by Volkswagen can drool over the Atacama as much as they want. Volkswagen is keeping mighty tight-lipped about the features that are available if they ever put this vehicle into production.

In fact, VW has really dropped the ball on this. Their website for the U.S. doesn’t mention the Atacama at all, even as a teaser advertisement. If you type “Atacama” into their search field, it returns no results. That’s not the case for Google, however. People are talking about this van and they’re excited. Why would VW lose out on that buzz?

Here is where some of the buzz came from (there was so much, I just linked to the first few entries):

• VW Crafter Atacama Concept – Autoblog

• Camper Van Beethoven: VW Reveals Atacama Concept – Jalopnik

• Straightline – VW Atacama concept

• Volkswagen Crafter Atacama Concept

• Atacama VW concept van sees light of day news story in Cars – Pocket-lint.co.uk