2008 Kia Amanti! Leather, Moon, Htd Seats! 1 Owner Non-smoker/ Luxury Car! on 2040-cars

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Kia teases next-gen K5 in South Korea, foreshadows our Optima

Now that the redesigned Hyundai Sonata is down the road burning gas, Kia's loading the next-generation Optima into the chute. The automaker teased the South Korean-market K5 — our Optima — on Facebook, revealing a sedan that will bring a new attitude to the midsize competitor. The sketches largely line up with spy shots we got a couple of months ago, starting with the clamshell hood running down to a narrower, wider tiger nose grille. Two creases in the center of the hood bracket the Kia logo. We can't know what trim is on display in the rendering, but the pictured upper and lower grilles give up the mesh pattern on the current car for horizontal strakes. A pair of DRLs frame the front fascia, the Z-shaped light signature longer and more abstracted than that on the Cadenza sedan.  The profile includes a couple of signature strokes that create a wholly different impression. Moving the side mirrors to the doors emphasizes the sharp takeoff point for the greenhouse, emphasized with a chrome trim strip that could have come off a stretched Aston Martin DB11. Instead of the rear glass behind the C-pillar picking up from the edge of the backlight as on the current car and forming their own profile, the sketch show a faster glass design angled back to follow the shape of the roof. Lower down, the character line in the sketch rises from the front wheel arch to the rear door, then falls sharply to the rear wheel arch. We can't make out this line in any of the spy shots, though. The rear gets a lot edgier. It's possible the chrome greenhouse trim dips around the bottom backlight to form a single line around the car. A short decklid is backed by an integrated lip. A single taillight of dashed LEDs runs across the width, bookended by a tight V shape.  Wholesale change inside stresses the horizontal span. A slightly modified steering wheel sits ahead of a digital dash cluster. A second widescreen sits atop an instrument panel cut by wide, narrow vents and marked by fewer buttons. On the center console, the shifter's replaced with a rotary knob.  A debut could come before the end of the year, the sedan likely a 2021-model-year offering. Engines should mirror Sonata powertrains, consisting of a 1.6-liter four-cylinder and a 2.5-liter four-cylinder shifting through an eight-speed transmission, and a more powerful turbocharged four-cylinder expected to join the lineup.

Don't call it a minivan: Kia previews new Sedona Grand Utility Vehicle

Kia sells more crossovers than ever, but it's not forgetting about its entry into the minivan segment. It released a design sketch to preview the next-generation Carnival, which is known as the Sedona in the United States. Stylists shun the increasingly unpopular minivan label; they claim they've created a Grand Utility Vehicle whose design is more stylish, more futuristic, and, somewhat inevitably, more SUV-like than the outgoing model's. The sketch released by the South Korean firm indicates the Sedona's front end receives a taller, flatter hood, a bigger grille with vertical slats and a chrome-look frame, plus thin horizontal lights accented by LED elements. Its overall proportions don't drastically change, no one's going to mistake it for a Stinger, but blacked-out door pillars create the illusion of a floating roof. We don't know what the rear end looks like yet, though the company noted the horizontal crease below the window line links the lights on both ends. The alloys are gigantic, but keep in mind we're looking at a design sketch. The production model will ride on smaller wheels with more sidewall. We'll need to muster a little bit of patience to find out what the Sedona looks like inside, or what its sheetmetal hides. Practicality is the name of the game in the minivan segment, so Kia will likely pack an array of clever features into the van to make commuting, kid-hauling, and road-tripping easier. Seeing a hybrid powertrain join the specifications sheet would make sense considering the market's on-going shift towards electrification, but nothing has been confirmed at this point. The current-generation Sedona receives a 3.3-liter, 276-horsepower V6 for the American market, and we wouldn't be surprised if it downsizes to a turbocharged four-cylinder. Kia will introduce the fourth-generation Carnival this summer, and the model will go on sale in its home country in the third quarter. It will begin arriving in other global markets shortly after. Although the company didn't specifically mention the United States, we'd bet on seeing it in showrooms as a 2021 model. Minivans are getting their lunch money taken by crossovers here, but the segment remains reasonably big. Kia is one of its underdogs: It sold 16,000 examples of the Sedona in 2019, while Honda and Chrysler each found nearly 100,000 buyers for the Odyssey and the Pacifica, respectively, and Toyota reported 73,585 Sienna sales.

Kia unveils Horki sub-brand in China, kicks off with concept car

While we were busy ogling new vehicles like the Mercedes-Benz GLA Concept, Maserati Ghibli and Hongqi L9 at the Shanghai Motor Show, Kia was busy unveiling an entire brand. Through its Chinese joint venture, Dongfeng Yueda Kia (or DYK), the South Korean automaker has introduced its new Horki sub-brand and a concept car, simply called the Horki Concept.
The name Horki comes from the combination of two Chinese characters "Hor" and "Ki," which translates to "China driving." As this suggests, the brand will only be offered in China, and this concept sedan shares its platform with the 2014 Kia Forte. We didn't happen to catch the car live at the auto show, and apparently neither did Kia, since it only provided us with some drawings rather than live (or even studio) shots of the actual concept car. Thankfully, our friends at Newspress managed to ferret it out, so we have a couple of live pics to share after all.