Kia dusts off model name Carens for a new compact MPV. The Carens, which disappeared from the market in 2018, is being followed by a completely new model that will make its debut this month.
MPVs and especially medium-sized ones are dying in Europe, but elsewhere in the world car manufacturers are still paying attention to the segment of such smart space wonders. Kia comes about three years after taking the third generation Carens off the international car market, so just a new generation. The new fourth generation of the MPV will make its debut on December 16, but there is an important ‘but’.
For the time being, it seems very likely that the new Kia Carens is only intended for the Indian car market. The Indian branch of Kia shares a teaser video in which it announces the arrival of the new MPV. In that video you can see snippets of the new Carens and we also get a glimpse of the silhouette and lighting of the car. The new Carens will have LED daytime running lights that branch out sideways and rear lights that are connected to each other by means of an LED strip. In addition, the car seems to get some crossover influences and the design of the rear light is somewhat reminiscent of the way in which this light unit is designed on the Seltos, which are not available here.
That suggests that the new Carens is a broader derivative of that crossover. Kia may make the new Carens a seven-seat variant of the Seltos, but it is still too early to actually assume that. In the Netherlands, Kia sold more than 12,000 copies of the model across three generations of Carens between 2000 and 2018. The car had its peak year in 2003, when 1,617 units were sold in the Netherlands. The last generation of Carens was presented in 2012 and disappeared from the international market in 2018.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl