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Kia Cub Concept wanders over from Seoul

The little machine you see above is the Kia Cub. The Cub first debuted at the Seoul Motor Show, but this is the first time we've been able to see it ourselves in person, so we pointed our camera lenses its way and got to snapping.
According to our men on the show floor, the Kia Cub Concept is "quite good looking," with a squat and funky shape that looks mostly ready for production. With a five-door hatchback shape featuring reverse-opening doors (we'll resist calling them suicide doors... whoops...), this machine doesn't seem to share much design DNA with current Kia products. And that's fine. As much as we like Kia's swoopy line of cars and 'utes, a little shakeup every now and then never hurts.
We're sure the diminutive hatchback would be a fun car to pilot, with 204 horsepower and 195 pound-feet of torque coming from its turbocharged and direct injected 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine. Kia quotes a 0-62 time of 7.7 seconds and a top speed of 143 miles per hour. Sounds to us like it could be a worthy competitor to such successful sporting hatchbacks as the Mini Cooper S and Fiat 500 Abarth.

Kia shows sketches of sleek new 2019 K900 sedan

Kia has released two new sketches of the upcoming redesigned K900 sedan, after showing the car's profile last month. No longer resembling a scaled-up Optima, Kia says the design is a joint effort between its global design office in Namyang and the U.S. design studio in Irvine, Calif. The new upscale K900 will gain lines that have definitely been inspired by German manufacturers' luxury offerings — perhaps its design head Peter Schreyer's touch is showing through. The current generation has been with us since 2012, and the new generation might be a strong enough design to improve the K900's modest sales. Kia says the K900's design is based on a concept called "Gravity of Prestige," which certainly has resulted in a restrained, tasteful sedan without gimmicks. Even if the sportback Stinger positioned below the K900 looks good, it's a far more aggressive and whimsical design than what we see in these images. Kia mentions the new "Quadric Pattern" front grille on the K900 as having 176 "jewel-like" cells, which create an illusion of energy much like the spindle grille on the Lexus LF-1 Limitless concept; the headlights in turn are inspired by "the trajectory of light," and are called Duplex Comet lights. These teaser images aren't far from the finished product, as Kia says the K900 will already go on sale on the second quarter of 2018 in selected markets. So a full reveal is surely happening soon. It could be a good candidate for the New York Auto Show, since it's both a U.S. location that would make sense for a car partly designed in America, and it's one of the last big shows before the second quarter of 2018. Related Video:

K900 probably won't be last time Kia goes alphanumeric

This is part of an effort to ensure that the vehicle brand itself registers with consumers more than the model name.
The new Kia K900 luxury sedan stands as a four-wheeled flag in the ground of the financially fertile turf of the world's premium automakers. It's a bold move for a Korean manufacturer that was best known for inexpensive MSRPs and easy credit only a few years ago. The company has made sure it has the requisite trappings of premium motoring: indulgent size, rear-wheel drive, a powerful V8 engine, real wood trim and rich leather seats. It has also ensured the model has another important earmark of luxury - an alphanumeric name. These days, everyone from Audi to BMW to Cadillac to Lexus to Volvo rely on a jumble of letters and numbers to make up their model names. We've been told this is all part of an effort to ensure that the vehicle brand itself registers with consumers more than the model name.