Kia K4: compact Ceed-like with bold design

Whatever you think, the most striking designs in the car world lately have come from Korea. Hyundai does it with cars like the Ioniq 5 and the Ioniq 6, while sister brand Kia is slowly but surely rolling out a very bold new design style across its entire range. The Kia EV9 serves as a blueprint for the EV series of the future, but a similar style is also found in the brand’s fuel cars. In Europe we find it on the heavily facelifted version of the Kia Picanto, but in North America they are now presented with a completely new model. Literally, because a Kia K4 never existed there before. The Kia K4 is a compact sedan that until recently was delivered exclusively in China, but now also appears on the menu in North America. The brand is switching over to the naming convention that was already common in South Korea, which also explains why the Optima is now called K5. The K4 mainly seems to be a successor to the Forte, although the Forte is called K3 in Asia.

Kia K4 above, and for comparison the 2018 Kia Ceed below. That’s something different!

In any case, it is a special thing, that new K4. The compact sedan stands out because of its very strongly accentuated wheel arches, largely vertical headlights and remarkable C-pillar. It is also impossible to mistake it for anything else from the rear. The sliding sloping rear suggests a liftback valve, but it really seems to be a sedan.

The interior is equally special. Pay attention to the design, but also to the use of color. For example, the special green shade is on the top half of the right door panel, but is limited to a much smaller area on the left. In the ultra-modern whole, the traditional-looking automatic gear lever is secretly a bit out of place, although such a thing does of course offer a lot of ease of operation.

To be absolutely certain, we are doing almost nothing yet, because this is currently a ‘design reveal’. Details about the K4 will follow later, although they are not actually that interesting for European viewers. The design is exactly that, because is this what a new Ceed will look like? The Ceed was developed especially for Europe – it even owes the ‘e’s’ in its name to that – and is therefore currently separate from the K3, K4 and Forte, but the current model has been with us for six years now. Renewal is undoubtedly coming and this K4 certainly does not make us any less curious about the new Ceed.