Photo: Guido ten Brink / SB-Medien
The idea of a shooting brake has been butchered a little, but it resulted in some the best looking German cars ever to target family buyers. Yet the problem with the Panamera Sport Turismo and the CLS Shooting Brake, may it rest in peace, is that their fans can't afford them. Enter the Kia Proceed GT!
We don't have an official price for this thing, but our guess puts it at around €30,000, pretty close to rivals like the Peugeot 308 GT and Renault Megane GT.... SpotsWagon... whatever. Like those two, it also has fake exhaust tips, which is a bit of a bummer.
Kia is targetting a tiny niche with this car, one that other carmakers don't even acknowledge. It's the only affordable brand with a regular wagon and a shooting brake of the same size. But having too many models has always been the Korean modus operandi, and the Proceed replaces the previous generation's 3-door coupe, a Scirocco rival that few people wanted.
The parallel between the Proceed and Porsche is a superficial one, but can quickly be drawn: Kia's ice cube LED headlights and the "monobrow" taillights, which are connected in the middle. You could argue that the designers are lazy or that we've been looking at too many cars and see connections where none exist.
The Kia Ceed is made in Slovakia since 2006. The name is short for Comunity of Europe with European Design, which isn't catchy at all. Still, they've made over 1.3 million of them, and this is going to be the best.
We almost forgot to say that the Proceed GT model is a hot version, Not only does it come with a 1.6-liter turbo engine making over 200 HP and a standard twin-clutch automatic, just like the Megane GT, but it also gets an Alcantara interior with sporty red stitching. In Paris, we found that the layout of the infotainment table to be a little better than the Corolla Touring and the trunk divider a nice, upmarket feature. We're sure it will come with every safety feature as standard, even if you don't want it to.
Kia is targetting a tiny niche with this car, one that other carmakers don't even acknowledge. It's the only affordable brand with a regular wagon and a shooting brake of the same size. But having too many models has always been the Korean modus operandi, and the Proceed replaces the previous generation's 3-door coupe, a Scirocco rival that few people wanted.
The parallel between the Proceed and Porsche is a superficial one, but can quickly be drawn: Kia's ice cube LED headlights and the "monobrow" taillights, which are connected in the middle. You could argue that the designers are lazy or that we've been looking at too many cars and see connections where none exist.
The Kia Ceed is made in Slovakia since 2006. The name is short for Comunity of Europe with European Design, which isn't catchy at all. Still, they've made over 1.3 million of them, and this is going to be the best.
We almost forgot to say that the Proceed GT model is a hot version, Not only does it come with a 1.6-liter turbo engine making over 200 HP and a standard twin-clutch automatic, just like the Megane GT, but it also gets an Alcantara interior with sporty red stitching. In Paris, we found that the layout of the infotainment table to be a little better than the Corolla Touring and the trunk divider a nice, upmarket feature. We're sure it will come with every safety feature as standard, even if you don't want it to.
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