Oh, I thought the chicken tax only applied to light trucks.
I have a co-worker that has a couple of the VW caddies. We threw out a marble labtop a few years back and he fished it out of the dumpster. It weighed so much that his front wheels would not make enough contact to move him out of the parking lot.
there are several caddies running around here where I live and a couple of VW double cab pickups.
"Light Truck" = less than 1 row of seating and designed to haul cargo.
the ford Shrunken SUV/VAN configuration. is imported as a passenger van, and the seats, door trim and other parts are taken out and returned to a cargo van in the US.
VW, Ford, Chevy, Nissan, Toyota, and others did the "Cab-frame and box" imports through the 80's when they closed the loophole that allowed trucks to be imported and then have the bed installed.
I am not sure about this but I believe the Light truck assembly location is now classified on how much assembly is done in which country.
There is a local boat manufacturer that imports the parts from Canada, does final assembly and gel-coating on the boats at their plants in the US because the "parts" get taxed a lot less than the boats.
If VW moved the Amarok "Ute" truck body stamps to the US and stamped the body and painted it, then installed imported seats, hardware, Drive train, and glass there would be no question.
The only trick would be passing NTHSA, EPA and other tests and regulations.
I am not buying the new Passat's "German car feel" I owned a couple of Saturns, they may have been inspired, based on and built like German cars, but they were not a VW.