Three years after pulling the plug on the Stinger, Kia has confirmed what its performance-minded fans have been quietly hoping for. The Vision Meta Turismo concept is the brand's intended next flagship GT, and a spiritual successor to the car that gave Kia genuine enthusiast credibility. Kia's design chief Karim Habib told Autocar the brand fully intends to put the concept into production — but only once the economics make sense.The catch, and Habib is being upfront about it, is that the Vision Meta Turismo is a pure EV, and the cost of building a high-performance electric car at a viable price point is what's currently holding things up. Why The Stinger Still Matters Three Years After Its Death KiaThe Stinger was never a volume seller, but that was never really the point. Launched for the 2018 model year, it was a rear-wheel-drive, turbocharged grand tourer that occupied a space most mainstream brands had abandoned — the affordable, driver-focused fastback sedan. With a twin-turbocharged 3.3-liter V6 producing 365 horsepower in its top trim, it could run to 60 mph in under five seconds and looked the part doing it. For a brand still shaking its budget-car reputation at the time, the Stinger was a statement.Its discontinuation after the 2023 model year left a real gap — not just in Kia's lineup, but in the broader mid-size performance segment. Buyers who wanted a rear-drive GT with genuine back-seat room and a hatchback body had almost nowhere else to go at that price point. That's the void the Vision Meta Turismo is being positioned to fill.For a community that watched the Stinger get quietly discontinued in 2023 without a named replacement, a confirmed direction — even one with caveats — is meaningful news on its own. What Kia Is Actually Building KiaThe concept was originally revealed in Korea to mark Kia's 80th birthday, sitting on a new platform and showcasing a bold new design direction Kia calls Opposites United: Evolution. Kia has positioned it as its next flagship GT — the same role the Stinger occupied when it launched — with the "Turismo" name deliberately signaling grand-touring intent rather than a track-focused machine.What's notable is how far along the development already is. Autocar was shown not only the main concept but also a fastback variant that hasn't been publicly revealed yet, which the team described as "90% production-ready." Europe design boss Oliver Samson confirmed the work had been done to prove the car was physically viable: "We needed to prove that it would work. And, yeah, it would be physically possible."The confirmed EV powertrain will be a significant departure for Stinger loyalists expecting a turbocharged successor, but Habib framed the shift deliberately. What Enthusiasts Should Realistically Expect KiaConcept-to-production timelines in this segment typically run two to four years, and the pricing hurdle Kia has identified suggests the Vision Meta Turismo is closer to the beginning of that process than the end. That's not necessarily discouraging — it means the production car hasn't yet been compromised by cost-cutting decisions made under deadline pressure, and the existence of a near-production fastback variant suggests the engineering work is progressing in parallel with the business case.The bigger adjustment for Stinger loyalists won't be the wait — it'll be accepting that the formula has changed. The successor won't have a turbocharged V6. What Kia is promising instead is a flagship EV GT built with genuine performance intent, priced accessibly enough to carry forward what the Stinger started. For a brand that went two-plus years without acknowledging the gap at all, that confirmation is the news they've been waiting for.
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