Scouting Party: Revived Scout Brand Launches Website, Teases Front End

Matthew Guy
by Matthew Guy

As a follow-up to our news on the same earlier this summer, Volkswagen has its sights on reviving the Scout brand name as its moniker for off-road EVs. Today we get a kinda-sorta look at the first model’s front end, along with a few other tidbits from their freshly launched website.


With plans to produce an all-electric truck and SUV by 2026, VW is showing a shadowy teaser of what’s planned to be the front end of those two vehicles. Well, technically speaking, VW says this front end is of the SUV – but you can bet your bottom winch strap that Scout will take a page from the Hummer playbook and cut both their truck and SUV from the same cloth … at least ahead of the B-pillar. At this point, we can confidently tell you it will have a windshield and side mirrors. And sheet metal styled with a t-square.


Scout will have name recognition going for it at launch, not unlike what General Motors is doing with the Hummer name. Twisting an established title with amble good juju is definitely a way to sidestep many of the hurdles facing shiny new car brands. Witness the rise and fall of Scion. Or even Saturn, for that matter.


Oh, by the way, don't forget to check out the Scout forum run by our parent company,


They’ll also benefit from a deep well of Volkswagen Group talent from which to draw. According to LinkedIn, Scout’s current VP of Growth, Cody Thacker, has been on the job since September after spending a couple of years at Porsche and nearly a decade at Audi. For the latter, he was Director at a corner of the company which focused on electric vehicle strategy and EV ecosystem development in the US market for Audi of America. With that type of firepower at its disposal, chances are nil that Scout products will be half-baked compliance cars with few horses and a pitiful driving range.


With the industry moving at a rapid pace towards electrification, this author probably shouldn’t be surprised at the sheer volume of off-road EVs purported to be in the pipeline. Hummer is throwing down a gauntlet with its 9,000-pound pickup truck, Jeep has been playing with electrons in the Magneto concept and plans to soon launch the Recon EV, while the specter of an all-electric G Wagen called the EQG looms large.


Currently (pun intended), there are about 20 jobs listed on the Scout website, ranging from Infotainment Engineer to VP of Energy Systems and just about everything in between. Scout Motors, technically an independent company, plans to unveil its first prototypes in 2023 and begin production in 2026.


[Image: Scout]


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Matthew Guy
Matthew Guy

Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.

More by Matthew Guy

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  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
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