Korean car-maker’s first pick-up could give new Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux a headache
Details on the first pick-up truck from Kia and sister brand Hyundai are becoming hard – nay, impossible – to come by.
However, despite the radio silence from executives following some big announcements in 2019 – including R&D requests for single-cab and dual-cab utes with diesel and petrol powertrains – it’s clear there’s still a strong desire within the sister brands to land a king-hit on the top-selling Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger.
The Korean auto giant recently confirmed that a pick-up program was still alive and kicking despite reports to the contrary, and the tone of Kia Australia’s chief operating officer Damien Meredith – an outspoken proponent of the global pick-up program before he was muzzled by his superiors – remains cautiously positive so far in 2022.
During an interview at the Kia-sponsored Australian Open tennis tournament last week, when Kia announced pricing for its first dedicated electric model, the Kia EV6, we asked Meredith how exactly the ute project coming along.
“If we answer the question it won’t be good for our careers,” was Meredith’s response.
Speculation around an all-new Kia ute was reignited two months ago when the company’s global design boss Karim Habib told UK media a global pick-up would be a perfect fit for the brand and that he would “welcome it with open arms”.
Habib said he’d love to design a pick-up, so given the strong global demand for tray-back vehicles, which form the single biggest new-vehicle sales segment in Australia, what comes next?
“I’d love to sell some utes,” confessed Meredith, who wouldn’t be drawn on whether Habib was reprimanded for his comments but implied that the Ranger and HiLux are in for a rude shock.
“Let me tell you, for someone whose had his arse kicked a few times for lots of things, I know it will kick arse,” he said.
Hyundai-Kia’s long-awaited pick-up program is known to have passed the research stage and the company is now understood to be developing a new ladder-frame chassis to underpin an all-new one-tonne mid-size ute that would be available with a variety of body and powertrain options to directly target the huge-selling HiLux and Ranger.
We expect power to come from the brands’ 2.2-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel (148kW/440Nm) and perhaps even the newer 3.0-litre inline-six turbo-diesel (204kW/588Nm).
But Habib’s comments from late 2021 could point to something altogether different, including a range of new commercial vehicles under a new Kia sub-brand.
The Kia design director told Autocar that a global Kia pick-up “…would fit with our portfolio and the brand. In the pick-up market in the US, there is a huge amount of loyalty to existing brands.”
So it’s possible that Kia and Hyundai will deliver a scalable ladder-chassis platform to underpin both a pair of mid-size utes, like those most popular Down Under, and a pair of full-size pick-ups aimed directly at North America’s top-selling Ford F-Series and Chevrolet Silverado.
This strategy is precisely what Toyota is now rolling out with its modular TNGA-F platform – which underpins the new LandCruiser, Lexus LX, Tundra and Sequoia, and will also form the basis of the next HiLux and Prado by 2024.
And when the upcoming ‘T6.2’ generation Ranger, which shares its Australian-developed ladder frame with the Everest and Bronco, reaches the end of its lifecycle around 2030, the next-generation Ranger and F-Series (and their SUV derivatives) are expected to merge onto a common modular platform engineered in the US.
Similarly, Hyundai has previously said it is studying an all-new large off-road SUV, which would likely ride on the same platform and be positioned above the Palisade as the brand’s first direct rival for the LandCruiser.
And given Kia and Hyundai’s multi-billion-dollar EV push, all-electric versions of the Korean ute twins are almost certain to eventuate.
Watch this space.
Digital Images: KDesign AG, SRK Designs
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Keyword: Kia ute will ‘kick arse’