Kia Picanto must be very old with a thorough facelift

Volkswagen is discontinuing the Up, the Seat Mii and Skoda Citigo have long since been discontinued and Citroën and Peugeot saw no point in successors to the C1 and 108. Toyota still believes in the A segment, but for the new Aygo X have to shorten the more expensive platform of the Yaris to keep development costs low. The profit margins in the smallest class of the car country are small and, together with the high costs involved in developing a new model with electrified or even fully electric powertrains, many car manufacturers no longer venture into it. Kia and Hyundai still sell the Picanto and the i10. Whether that pair will get a technically completely new generation? Probably not for the time being, but at least the Kia Picanto – and probably also sister model i10 – seems to have a long life ahead.

The pre-facelift of the Kia Picanto.

First a quick review. The current generation of the Kia Picanto came on the market in early 2017, just under three years before the current and just facelifted Hyundai i10 was presented. The Kia Picanto was already subtly facelifted at the end of 2020, so Kia’s smallest was neatly in step with its larger brothers and sisters, but recently Kia has certainly not been idle in terms of design. The Kia Picanto will soon be facelifted for a second time, but a lot more thoroughly than before. And that is probably not easy.

New front, new bottom

This set of photos shows a very fanatically wrapped Kia Picanto with stickers. The window section seems to correspond completely to that of the current model, which indicates in nine cases out of ten that we are not dealing with a complete generation change. However, the Picanto will have a thoroughly revised front and rear. The horizontal headlights make way for vertically oriented ones, complete with expressive LED daytime running lights. For the new headlights, Kia not only replaced the front screens, but also the entire bonnet. The new Picanto front reminds us somewhat of that of the Telluride. The Picanto also gets new rear lights, copies with at least a light signature made up of vertical stripes. The changes are so drastic that we would not be surprised if Kia itself soon speaks of a generation change, but it will not be new down to the smallest nut. With its thoroughly renewed appearance, the Kia Picanto should probably be able to last for many years to come.

In 2022, the Kia was the most popular new passenger car in the Netherlands after the Peugeot 208. Nearly 7,400 copies were signed. Together with, among others, the Niro – of which almost 7,300 units were registered – this helped Kia to win the title of ‘most popular car brand in the Netherlands’ last year.