KIA close to building rear-wheel drive sportscar
KIA is still intent on launching a rear-wheel drive sports car to compete with the BMW 4 Series and Audi A5. The first preview of this new direction for KIA was the Nova concept shown in 2015 but since then we haven’t heard much. Now KIA is talking about having something ready by 2017 and the leaked images of a V8 GT concept suggests there’s some weight behind the claims.
With Hyundai’s expanding N-sport range, KIA must be keen to snuff out their Korean sibling’s foray into the performance segment. Indeed when we spoke to Ray Levine of KIA Motors South Africa he did subtly hint that such a range of cars was in the pipeline.
The new KIA rear-wheel drive sportscar might shrink in size from these concepts in which case the G70 platform would provide the ideal proportions and layout. Powering this new car could be a choice of 2.0, 2.2 and 3.0-litre engines but we’d still like to see the 1.6-litre GDI turbo engine, as fitted to the KIA Koup.
With styling that’s sure to excite and a pretty solid KIA Koup to build on, don’t discount the brand’s seriousness when it comes to developing a sportscar.
