Scout purists, I have interesting news: I have it on good authority that Scout — a subsidiary of VW and future purveyor of the glorious Traveler and Terra — might build a two-door convertible 4×4 SUV variant of the Traveler/Terra. I’m a bit skeptical, but here’s what I know.
While at the Scout reveal in Nashville, I spotted on one of the manufacturing-presentation slides a little nugget about portfolio expansion.
Here’s a look:
Look at that. There’s the Terra pickup, the Traveler SUV, and then… something else. It looks perhaps a bit shorter than the Traveler, which makes me think it could be a two-door; and at that point, given how niche the vehicle would be, I wouldn’t’ be surprised if it were a convertible like the old Scouts (and the old Willys Jeeps that inspired them).
I reached out to Shaheen Karimian, head of product marketing at Scout (and one of the most legit car enthusiast there is), to ask about the decision to go with a hardtop on the Traveler given how big of a deal convertability is in the Jeep Wrangler/Ford Bronco space. Here’s what he told me:
It’s about the comprehensive customer experience and setting up the vehicle for success
Our core customers are saying they want a rugged vehicle. Meaning great packaging, competitive off road attributes, and something that can comfortably take a family across the country or into the outdoor environment.
How can we provide an open air feeling with the maximum amount of benefit, with the least amount of compromise? We landed at the cabana roof and glass roof options. On a two row vehicle of this size, to deliver on all the other customer needs, the removable panels would be large, heavy, and challenging to provide a high quality experience without creating a higher customer price or an impacted vehicle experience.
It is true a smaller subset of customers are saying they want that removable roof experience….Doesn’t mean we can’t do one in the future, on say a vehicle with fewer doors and a shorter wheelbase.
HOT DAMN.
Please car gods, deliver!
So that’s not a whole lot, but still, there is some amount of reason to believe that a two-door convertible Scout could be on the horizon. If that two-door comes with the range-extender option, I’d be tempted to choose it over the Traveler I just preordered. Because a two-door Extended-Range EV with a tailgate, a rear spare tire carrier, a solid axle, and a bench seat is the Grail of Grails.
Either way, consider my hopes up!
Though really, I should keep those hopes in check. The two-door Wrangler is such a low-volume product, and ditto with the two-door Bronco. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if those were canceled at some point in the not-so-distant future. The take-rate for a two-door SUV is just so low. But perhaps as a halo product to to build up a brand that’s new on the scene it could make a bit of sense? I’m not so sure.
All I know is: I want it to happen. So I’ll be doing “manifesting” or whatever it is the teens say I need to do to make this two-door open-top EREV dream happen.
[Graphics Guy note: top image via Scout Motors. The convertible 2-door is Photoshoppery, of course]
I think a Scout II length vehicle with stubby clamshells like the old FJ would be a decent compromise, but the real thing they need to do regardless of the door configuration is offer a full drop top version. That is the Iconic Scout look. A more full size SUV style with no roof on a beach somewhere.
Actually, how is it that Toyota has let the FJ Dies with no replacement. Missed the note about off roady looking things as being the darling of the ball right now? or what?
At 92″ wide where the heck is it going to fit? I love what they’re aiming for here, but it’s absolutely massive…
I feel like the Traveler in that photo is already a two door
Best chances of this working out for them financially are if they can build it on the same production line as the 4-door with little interruption. I’m not aware of Scout’s factory setup, but it has been successfully done before by other manufacturers.
If you could hear me in the comment section here, I’m singing “Baby Scout” to the tune of Baby Shark.
Thank you for getting that song stuck in my head. Now every time I hear it, it will be about the scout. Grandpa scout do do do do do.
A 2 door Scout convertible is perfect, I love it.
VW will totally be down for building something that will make Areton sales look like F150 numbers in comparison.
If they make a 2 door with a removable hard top I would be near sold on getting one of these. As I stated in one of the other articles I am now debating between one the Travelers and the R3X to replace my aging FJ Cruiser but leaning more towards the scout but I am not bot really the biggest fan of bigger 4dr SUV’s and the R3X is supposed to be cheaper.
I’d be curious about what sort of production numbers their factory is capable of and what sort of sale numbers they’d have to do of the Traveller (let alone the Terra) to justify a third iteration.
Personally, I’d prefer a Terra EREV with a flatbed. But then…who am I kidding cause no Scout is going to be available outside North America and certainly not in RHD. VW doesn’t even make commercial vehicles anymore…unless one counts the Buzz Load EV or whatever it is.
Somehow they will do to this what they did to the new bus. It will come out years late and cost too much.
I hope I’m wrong.
Please don’t. I couldn’t care less that my Wrangler has a removable top but I do want a 2 door.
Hmmm
By the time it might actually be available, I might only have to deal potentially with one booster seat —if the bench is still available in the two-door.
I’ve never reserved a vehicle before, but I reserved for the Traveller EV. I’ve owned and driven Jeeps for 40 years and intended to nurse my 2012 JK 2-door 6-speed (with 140K miles) along until the Magneto arrived. But with Stellantis botching the Jeep brand and giving the finger to all us long-time Jeep folks, I’m ready to jump brands. My grandfather and my dad each had Scouts, and I love the heritage. Was looking at the R3X, but would prefer another short wheelbase 2-door in the Wrangler form factor. If Scout releases a 2-door with removable top? I’m in. 100%.
Can you really call 1 model over 2 generations “heritage”? This whole brand is going to flop.
“Our core customers are saying”
Who? What? They have customers?
The ghost of Cyrus Hall McCormick?
A Scout 80 size scout would be great!
But who who are these core customers?
I would spend all the money
A 2 door Scout would be great, though I’d want it to be a 3 seat 2 door with the front bench seat.
We definitely need more convertible BEVs, and proper convertibles, not electric sliding soft top ones.
I grew up riding around in a little red 1960s Scout and then in a bigger blue Scout II—both pickups, both with removable roofs.
I would love to see a two-door removable top version. ????
You won’t need a four-door if Scout announces a two-door convertible variant anyway, because your entire lifetime supply of potential offspring will gush out of you as soon as they do.
I see what you did here
That would almost be my unicorn. The Terra and the Traveler are still a bit bigger and wider than I’d prefer. So maybe at some point we have a family of Scout vehicles including a true compact truck or SUV of the Jimny class. But, whatever, keep on keepin’ on Scout. I might be persuaded to go bigger.
Same. My dad and grandfather each had a Scout 800. That and my family’s ’68 VW Type III Squareback were my earliest vehicle memories. Dad later got a CJ-5 and after that, a YJ. 2-door Wrangler- type vehicles are still feel like the proper proportion to me. I thought the replacement for my 2012 2-door 6-speed JK would be the Magneto, but I just reserved a Traveller, which I will happily switch to whatever 2-door they release if that’s offered. I love what the execs said at the rollout – buttons, body-on-frame, no sharing customer info, etc… They’re saying all the right things. Can’t wait to see how the company executes.
I’d like Scout to be so successful people stop appending VW to its name. I know Wolfsburg holds the purse strings, but I’m encouraged Scout is it’s own entity, was designed here, and will be built here and you don’t have to hit a VW dealer to buy one. A little curious as to how they’ll build out their service, but imagine it’ll be akin to the Tesla model.
Agreed. My interest in Scout is contingent VW stay as far from it as possible. Selling at a VW dealer? No go. VW can inject capital and reap backend rewards. Ironically, I’m sure the Harvester engine will be some VW mill, and as it’s the most compelling aspect of the Scout (to me), that’s unfortunate.
I wonder if REX motors have to meet emissions requirements if they function as nothing but a generator? If not, maybe old air cooled Beetle engines will make a comeback as REXs. Not really hoping for that, but it’d be funny to hear a Scout go by clattering like something out of the sixties.
If we’re going that route, why not an old Benz TD?
Greenies would go nuts.
Fuck em.
It would be a hoot but I think there are problems. You have only so many car people. By that people who have/will spend the money on a boutique car. Now of those there is a subset of what kind of vehicle they want. Now you have a small number but they are only going to buy 1 vehicle maybe two. Now you have another subset off road two door convertible 4×4 no room for family. Now you have three vehicles to choose from. Now you are the third out of the gates. That market is tiny. Think Miata and how they were first still sell great but just about every other Johnny come lately is or has failed even the one that was a Miata with a better looking body. I think to make the small sales numbers vehicle market successful we need to go back in time. Remember Healey’s? They used to make a small number of unique car bodies designed for higher sales volume vehicles. We need to go back to coach building, maybe kit cars using 3D printers to put radical designs on every day cars and maybe even upgrade them like a few of the companies that boost Mercedes and BMWs for increased performance. Use ceramic molds that are cheaper because they don’t last but lower volumes they don’t need to. It is guaranteed lower volume like Isuzu did with the Vehicross. A good computer design team could program any body style you want and print out from 1 to 1 million of them. I’m surprised Musk hasn’t done this already.
And yet, we have the Murano CrossCabriolet.
And the Evoque Convertible.
And the T-Roq Cabriolet.
And the Bronco 2 door.
And the Wrangler 2 door.
Only 2 of those are currently sold here in the US.
The US isn’t the center of the universe.
I’ve been told by physicists that everywhere is the center of the universe. Ipso facto post hoc semper ubi sub ubi.
Ok, even granting your opinion, the Murano and Evoque have still been discontinued for years.
Suzuki X-90
Not relevant, but I saw a CrossCabriolet Friday —first time ever with the top down
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the 2-door being a halo car. Most people buy SUVs on image; it makes them feel like they’re not sinking ten years of payments into a soulless commuting appliance, but something FUN! or at least capable of FUN! maybe someday. A four-door station wagon, no matter how lifted, does not say that to most people; a two seater convertible does.
To the average person, a Scout just looks like any other SUV. Most people can’t tell the difference between something that has skeuomorphic visual offroading flourishes, an automotive Viceroy butterfly, and couldn’t care at all about the difference between EREV and PHEV. PHEV softroaders with 10% more mpg and 80% of the cost will eat the Scout alive in the Normal People Market.
I don’t think the Bronco would have taken off at all if it had launched without a two-door variant or a fixed top, and the Bronco has more name recognition by far. The Scout brand isn’t hugely known to non-enthusiasts, and both EREV architecture and offroad chops aren’t something that have any visual appeal. People can’t see offroading prowess or a EREV drivetrain. (Unless we start doing big graphic letting down the side, like the turbo 80s. Can we? Please? Big old ‘EREV’ down the side cut out from a contrasting diagonal stripe.) So the brand’s going to need to survive on a fanbase of offroad nerds until it gets lucky.
Hopefully Volkswagen’s leadership understands that the strategy of starting with an enthusiast base and building credibility is very slow to get started and they’ll have to nurture a tiny but rabid community for years before they break into the mainstream.
True but non enthusiasts are not buying these types of vehicles. Maybe the genx I am different crowd who all dress, talk, think, and dress alike, can we ditch the manbun already, but you might appeal to them as the ultimate stand out from the crowd group but risk alienating the true enthusiast because manbun.
This might be true in that the brands of Wrangler and Bronco were built on classic 2 door models, but Jeep people have been begging for a 4-door Wrangler for decades, and nobody is buying 2-door Wranglers or Broncos. A 2- door Scout, IMO, would only be a novelty. They’ll sell far, far more 4-doors. Not to mention, offroading today isn’t really the same as it was 30 years ago. Overlanders aren’t going to fit all their crap in a 2-door. Few folks are buying the less practical version of generally practical cars. Why would dad get a sedan for family AND a 2-door SUV for fun when he can get a 4-door SUV for family and fun? Honestly, I don’t see a 2-door Scout selling well at all (compared to 4-door) unless it offers something different than just 2 less doors. Being a convertible isn’t it.
All that is very true, but it’s not about what sells, it’s about image. It’s about getting people into the (figurative) dealership. Like Tracy said: Halo Car. And not in the
PumaWarthog sense.Again, I insist:
Normal people buy cars based on emotion first, and then practicality.
Do most people take home a 4-door and never take the roof off? Absolutely. But the emotional connection to the fun, exciting, impractical model is already made. This is why I said skeuomorphic softroaders will eat the Scout’s lunch. Without something that says ‘Yes, we are cool as a Jeep!’ on the (metaphorical) front lawn, most people will will get the same emotion from something that has black plastic cladding, a tall ride height, and chunky styling, and that something will be cheaper to purchase and operate because it only needs to pretend to offroadery things.
I noticed something interesting doing some extremely cursory research: For Jeeps and Broncos, the advertising tends to show the 2-door, or a 4-door with the top off.
Overlanders are enthusiasts. Enthusiasts can’t float a brand alone. My worry is that Volkswagen will want immediate profitability and kill the brand before it can build the same cachet that Land Rover and the Land Cruiser have that allow them to succeed without the `Fun!’ factor.
“On a two row vehicle of this size, to deliver on all the other customer needs, the removable panels would be large, heavy, and challenging to provide a high quality experience without creating a higher customer price or an impacted vehicle experience.”
(/confused face)
Whilst road/wind noise is a potential downside to removable roofs, I’ve never felt the panels on either the Bronco or Wrangler were too heavy or large.
This is quite a bit larger than either a Bronco or Wrangler though.
v10mous is right. This thing is about the size of a modern Tahoe. Its larger than the classic Travelall that was the 4 door big brother to the Scout.
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My first time reserving a vehicle!
Mine too! Congrats on your brilliant choice. 🙂
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
And they’re baker’s dozens, too.
Take a few breaths David, gonna be a few years before any chance of a 2 door cause they regular market would need to be in production and successful first I suspect, haha.
[breathes into bag]
Don’t lose hope if Ford and Jeep bail out there may be a market big enough for just the Scout.
It could happen ????.