Kia shows Ford, Renault et al that you can launch a rounded petrol hatchback in 2026
Where in the world a car manufacturer chooses to assemble its models can have enormous significance. With various tariffs, grants and popular opinion dependent on a car’s place of origin, it can really decide its fortunes. It also says something about the centre of gravity of a car maker’s model range.Kia’s European factory in Zilina, Slovakia, was chosen to produce the Ceed (with and without apostrophe), the hatch designed specifically for Europe. But now Ceed production has come to an end, and replacing it in Slovakia is not another petrol-engined hatch but an electric one, the EV4.That doesn’t mean Kia is giving up on the conventional hatch; it is simply turning it into a more global product. Kia is rolling the Ceed and its international siblings, the Forte and the Cerato, into one car, the new Kia K4, which is produced in Pesqueria, Mexico, for the whole world. But it does suggest that for Europe, at least, EVs are where it’s at.Having said all that, Kia clearly isn’t planning on repeating Ford’s ill-fated ‘world car’ experiment, so it insists there’s strong market-specific tuning, and indeed there are some interesting technical differences to note, with different powertrain and bodystyle line-ups for each region.That includes a refreshingly basic specification of a 1.0-litre engine with a manual gearbox, which we have put through the full road test procedure.
