The New Kia Tasman Is A Design Disaster

Finally, after what seems like an eon of teasing, Kia has pulled the lurid vinyl wraps off the Tasman, the brand’s first entry into the piranha-infested waters of the compact pick-up truck market. Kia and their sister brand Hyundai have latterly been gaining a lot of praise from some quarters for their current designs, so the world has been waiting to see exactly how they would approach a new, and potentially very lucrative segment.

It’s worth remembering that the pickup truck, as much as it defines the US market, is not a uniquely American proposition. We’ve been enjoying Mitsubishi L200s, Ford Rangers and VW Amaroks in the UK for a couple of decades now, and the Toyota Hilux for even longer. American full-sizers do occasionally make their way on British shores as well via private import or specialist dealers. Farmers love their combination of capability, performance and comfort; this combination of attributes is not available in anything else. Regarding compact trucks, a quirk in UK tax regulations meant small one-person businesses could buy a higher trim Ranger Wildtrak and use it as a personal vehicle, something that Ford UK, ever with their eye on the ball, was happy to exploit. Although that tax loophole has now been closed, the fancy compact pickup has remained popular with the sort of people who decorate their houses with stone bulldogs on the outside and union jack cushions on the inside.

It’s a similar story in the upside-down colonies. The traditional car-based Aussie ute died when Holden was killed, so consequently American full sizers have exploded in popularity. Toyota is soft-launching the Tundra to fleet customers ahead of an official rollout. Along with the usual compact-sized suspects from Ford, VW, Toyota and now the Chinese OEMs, it’s a bloodbath down there. All this is a roundabout way of saying the worldwide compact pickup market is vast, and the various marques have consolidated their offerings. Essentially the same trucks are available across all non-North American markets, so it’s no surprise that Kia, currently enjoying their time in the sun, wants to get involved.

What Exactly Is A Kia?

As a car designer, it’s always a fun and useful thought exercise to imagine a brand coming up with something they don’t currently make. For car design students it’s a useful jumping-off point for a project, and as an educator it tells me a lot about how well a student understands a brand’s design language, identity and the market.

For example, when I was a student, a compact Fiesta-sized baby Jaguar was an old chestnut that kept popping up because everyone was angling for a job a JLR. I never thought much of the merits of that idea, because fifteen years ago Jaguar was an ostensibly premium brand attempting to be a British BMW. You have to consider what fits. When I studied at the RCA, my tutor J Mays told me to look for the gaps in an OEMs range – what don’t they currently make that they could?

Back then the idea of a Ferrari, Rolls Royce or Aston Martin SUV would have seen me laughed out of the studio, but the market got too lucrative for them to ignore. How successful these cars are from a design point of view is a discussion for another time, but there’s no arguing with what they bring to the bottom line. For Kia, the issue is slightly different.

For an OEM with a strong brand and a clear visual identity it’s easier to transpose those characteristics onto a new type of vehicle you don’t currently build. With Kia, it’s a bit tricky, because what exactly is a Kia? Some willfully different for the sake of being different detailing aside, taken individually their cars are mostly pretty good, although I really cannot get on with the Z shape of the lights on the K5, nor the down-turned mouth rear lighting on the EV6. But taken one by one on their own terms, they are not bad at all.

The problem comes when you look at the entire range. It’s hard to draw a consistent through-line across all their cars. There’s no underlying theme joining them all together. It seems like nothing really unites them visually. Now, this is not by and of itself necessarily a problem. I’ve talked before about how this allows mainstream OEMs a great deal of freedom to make compelling-looking cars without having to adhere to a family look. The problem comes when you do move into a totally new segment; then you’ve not got brand recognition to fall back on – nothing to tell consumers that “this new pickup is a Kia.” The way to avoid this trap is to create something really compelling that’s impossible to ignore. Unfortunately for Kia, they’ve made something that’s impossible to ignore for all the wrong reasons. The Tasman is hideous.

Eugene Levy Wants His Eyebrows Back

The first thing your eyes are drawn to, because you simply cannot avoid them, are the totally incongruous fender flares. Standing proud like Eugene Levy’s eyebrows, these oversized slabs of black polypropylene look like they’re from a completely different truck. Because they extend too far forwards and backward in the longitudinal axis, they don’t fit the shape of the wheel arch at all. Neither do they wrap around the entire opening, hampering their ability to protect the painted sheet metal. Look at how a Defender uses its cladding if you want to see this done properly.

According to our friends over at Motor1, Kia Australia CEO Damien Meredith knows the fender flares are contentious:

“It’s very good news. I can assure you that accessory [fender flare] will be there at launch.” What I like to call the “Tom Selleck mustache” will be optionally swapped out in favor of extended fender flares surrounding the entire wheel arch.

Motor1 goes on to say that it will also be possible to option them in body color. I think the effect is going to be like attempting to cover a particularly angry spot on your face with one of those flesh colored make-up sticks. This all suggests that after the body in white had been signed off someone, somewhere in the studio found their glasses and realized an almighty clanger had been dropped, and they had to scramble to come up with last-minute solution fixes. If you think I’m talking out of my ass, look at the short cab in black with the drop side (tabletop for our resident Australians) bed. Because it instantly banishes half the fender flares and camouflages the remainder against the bodywork, it instantly looks 100% better. Well 50%.

Whales And Planes

Moving around to the front, bloody hell. Oy vey. Insert your choice of hands-in-the-air expression here. I think the Kia exterior team must have had either a Beluga whale or Beluga Airbus, or possibly both on their mood board. How else to explain the Tasman’s oversized grill surround which protrudes into the air like a giant metal forehead, neglecting to bring the headlights or radiator grill itself along with it for company? Or indeed visual balance. Ripped straight from the Kia Global Tasman press release:

“The Kia design team deliberately shunned the familiar form language that has dominated the pickup genre for decades. This fresh approach to aesthetics strips away the unnecessary to begin with a basic, honest form that highlights the vehicle’s sense of solid power through simple yet functional elements, without relying on the oversized styling that has come to dominate the pickup segment.”

Now it’s no surprise that from a design point of view the embutchification of pickup trucks has been an ongoing problem ever since Dodge debuted the Big Rig second generation Ram way back in 1993.

Since then it’s been a chrome-plated arms race in the manner of ‘Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades’ as OEMs try to out do each other to make the most aggressive-looking trucks known to man, subtlety, nuance, and small children be damned.

Kia’s word salad appears to say they are deliberately attempting to not do that, but they didn’t exactly not do it either. In a way, by integrating the headlights into the fender flares they designed themselves into a corner – forcing the lights to be too small in comparison to the height of the hood and consequently the grill surround. A kind interpretation would be that it references the Dodge Power Wagon. But I’m not being kind so I’m going to say it suggests the Kia Retona, an abysmally cross-eyed device from the late eighties that was a civilian version of the K131 Jeep that was foisted on an unsuspecting South Korean military. Everything at the front is just out of proportion – like a particularly derpy sea creature from the bottom of the Mariana Trench whose features are too small for its face. Yikes. Chuck it back.

The Quartic Steering Wheel Is Back, Baby!

Opening the door and stepping inside the situation gets better. It’s not Tacoma, Defender or Wrangler levels of rugged, but it’s cohesive and pleasant enough, even if there’s a paucity of hard controls. Considering the Tasman is meant to be a working vehicle as well as a lifestyle one, this is curious. No amount of knurling on the door handles is going to make up for a lack of chunky switches that can be used with gloved hands on the worksite. Also, the steering wheel is giving me British Leyland flashbacks, as it appears to yoinked straight out of an Austin Allegro. The center console has a natty fold-out table, but like the under-seat storage, this is something we’ve seen before. It does all feel tilted toward the lifestyle part of the brief though, so it will be interesting to see what the more basic, harder-wearing commercial versions are going to look like.

Remember what I was saying about Kia not having a consistent visual identity? That’s why KIA is stamped on the tailgate in letters so large they can be seen from the International Space Station. The view from the rear is much more successful than the front, but then again there are fewer ingredients to fuck up. If it all aligns and makes sense and you don’t try to add features that are not necessary you’re golden. Given their propensity for mangled, messy surfacing on other cars in their range Kia has surprisingly not given in to that temptation here. There are corner steps in the rear bumpers, but again this is something cribbed from other pickups.

How Did They Manage To Mess Up The Brief?

I’ve been following the online discourse on the Tasman since it was revealed this morning, and the consensus to put it mildly is one of abject horror. A sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly. [Ed Note: I actually love it, but I also love the Australia-only Jeep CJ-10 pickup from the 1980s -DT]. The whole thing is just too stodgy, too blocky, and too upright. You don’t want a pickup to look sporty and dynamic because that would be stupid, but angling the sides a bit above the beltline to give the cursed thing some tumblehome would help a lot without pinching any head and shoulder room. Likewise raking the rear windshield forward just a couple of degrees would loosen the whole thing up, and make it look less brutal.

Kia can and has made some genuinely terrific-looking cars in the past. I always thought the Optima was a solidly handsome thing, and the Stinger was one or two overwrought details (the tail lamps wrapping in line down the rear fender always bothered me) away from looking really nice. The Sportage, Telluride and Carnival are pretty good for what they are. They are capable of good design when they try.

What they’ve served up this time is a sort of NPC compact truck. The Tasman doesn’t have the reputation of a Hilux, or the market ubiquity of a Ranger. For a fickle and competitive sector, you need a compelling-looking, cohesive design. Instead, the Tasman looks like a truck built out of parts from several other trucks, made from Lego by someone being given a description over the telephone. The stance is bad, the fender extensions are misguided and the whole thing is just a horrible inconsistent mess.

On some fundamental level, pickup trucks are just cool. Or at least, they should be. It comes with the territory. It’s a bit like designing sports cars or muscle cars – a dream assignment. I used to love drawing pickup truck versions of the [redacted] when I was in the studio. You’ve got to try really hard to fuck it up. But that’s what Kia has managed to do. The Tasman is the sum of several bad parts and somehow manages to be less than all of them.

Unless otherwise stated, all images courtesy of Kia
Top graphic: Eugene Levy in Schitt’s Creek 

• The 2025 Kia Tasman Has a Very Important Job To Do
• I Drove The 2024 Ford Ranger And It Feels Like The Old Truck In A Nice Suit
• I Didn’t Think The New $57000 Ford Ranger Raptor Would Be Worthy Of The Raptor Name. Then I Drove One
• Why The Fourth-Gen Tacoma’s Design Is A More Successful Version Of The Third-Gen Tundra