WardsAuto Podcast: Scout Motors Shows Its BEVs

When Volkswagen Group negotiated with Navistar in 2021 to buy the truck maker, German executives paid no attention to the Scout SUV brand still held by the company.

But Scott Keogh, CEO of Volkswagen of America, had wondered for some time what had become of the brand that sold SUVs and pickups from 1961 to 1980. Keogh was delighted to find that VW was about to take ownership of the brand along with the deal to acquire the commercial truck business. Keogh made the case to VW headquarters in Wolfsburg that the automaker should look at reintroducing Scout as an electric brand to address emissions mandates, as well as the U.S. market’s love of SUVs.

VW has dabbled in the SUV market with limited results – the Tiguan, Touareg and Atlas, with the Atlas being the new focus of the company’s production at its Chattanooga plant in Tennessee.

Scout Motors was formed in 2022. A commitment to build a 4,000-worker, 200,000-unit plant in South Carolina was greenlighted, and Keogh found himself the CEO of a whole new brand inside VW Group.

Scout showed the media the first two model designs, the Traveler SUV and Terra pickup, recently in Nashville. WardsAuto Podcast Host David Kiley talks with product marketing director Shaheen Karimian, as well as Joe McIntire, a Scout enthusiast and owner who converted his vintage Scout into a BEV.