Three-Row Hero

Volkswagen’s Atlas has a lot riding on its burly shoulders.

- K.C. Colwell

IT IS FITTING THAT THE ALL-NEW Volkswagen Atlas takes its name from the Greek god condemned to keep the sky from falling on mortals. VW needs this long-overdue three-row ute to lift the hugely publicized diesel-emissions scandal that continues to hang over the company [see page 050]. While sales for the people’s brand are up through spring, they’re still down compared with prescandal 2015, and the recent sales gains are largely due to the arrival of the Golf All track, a boomlet that eventually could fizzle. Hence the need for the Atlas to prop up the enterprise.

Riding on the same flexible architecture that underpins the Golf, the Tennessee-built Atlas is a medium-large three-row SUV that fills a major gap in VW’s portfolio. Not since the Routan, a rebadged Dodge Grand Caravan that VW last sold in 2013, has there been a Volkswagen with more than five seatbelts. Buyers have been forced to look elsewhere for their family-hauling needs.

The Atlas’s outer dimensions skew toward the burly end of the segment. Overall length is within an inch of the Ford Explorer and the Nissan Pathfinder, but the VW has a longer wheelbase and makes excellent use of its footprint. Seven passengers, or six if buyers opt for the late-availability second-row captain’s chairs, have 153 cubic feet of space to share. That matches the Honda Pilot’s interior volume and eclipses that of the Mazda CX-9 by 18 cubes, although it’s just shy of the Explorer’s 155. With butts in all the seats, the Atlas has 21 cubic feet of cargo space while most competitors are in the teens.