More than 130 people enjoyed a remote test drive experience in a Volkswagen Amarok while attending the Big Red Bash music festival in the Simpson Desert.
The Big Red Bash is Australia’s most remote music festival situated more than 1500km west of Brisbane near the intersection of the Queensland, South Australia and Northern Territory borders.
This year the festival also doubled as Australia’s most remote test drive experience, as Volkswagen customers drove the Amarok across the Little Red which is the sibling to the Simpson Desert’s famous Big Red sand dune.
One customer gained arguably the world’s longest test drive: after his own Ute failed to proceed, Volkswagen provided an Amarok for them to drive the 2,077km back home to Sydney. This was a 6,000km-plus trip for that vehicle.
During the 4000km expedition circuiting the Simpson Desert, more than 10 Amaroks faced both road closures and just-reopened trails that included over 100km of constant mud.
The expedition started in Broken Hill before moving up through the Sturt National Park into Queenland along the Warry Gate road to Eromanga and finally to Windorah. The last stretch, on drenched and just-opened tracks, was from Windorah to Birdsville stopping off at the Betoota Hotel.
“We wanted to show real Australians, families towing caravans and exploring the outback to the fullest, the depth of engineering in our Australian designed second-generation Amarok,” Volkswagen Commerical Vehicles marketing and national product manager Nathan Johnson says.
“The all-new Amarok is the direct result of taking Australians’ feedback on board and creating a ute born from tough love delivered by our dual-cab ute-loving market – our Volkswagen ute’s biggest worldwide,” he said.
Volkswagen continues to sponsor the Big Red Bash, which this year was home to Icehouse, John Williamson, Hoodoo Gurus, Human Nature, Pete Murray, The Angels, Troy Cassar-Daley, Kate Ceberano, Wendy Matthews and more.
