Kia: Drive the Tasman ute before making your mind up
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Don’t knock it until you try it is the message from Kia Australia, which urges potential buyers not sold on its Tasman ute to look at one in person – and take a test drive – before forming a judgement.
Kia Australia has urged critics of its first-ever ute, the diesel Tasman, to look at it in the metal – and get behind the wheel – before writing it off on photos or the specification sheet alone.
The South Korean car giant forecasts that about 10,000 to 11,000 of the 90,000 new vehicles it aims to deliver this year will be Tasmans, before scaling up to 20,000 next year.
It intends to steal sales from the likes of the Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger, and believes the Kia ute has an advantage over its rivals in practicality and capability to do so.
It would contrast initial criticism towards the Tasman online, which has focused on its polarising styling, and a four-cylinder diesel engine that is down on the torque outputs of rival utes.
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“Drive it,” Kia Australia boss Damien Meredith told Drive when asked for his message to customers not sold on the Tasman from what they’ve read online.
“We’re very confident in its off-road capability, that the extensive work that has been done by Graeme Gambold [Kia Australia ride/handling engineer] and the team on this product far outstrips anything else,” said Kia Australia head of marketing Dean Norbiato.
“A detailed, multi-year programme that we feel has got a really competitive off-road advantage, but then [is] also very dynamic on-road.
“So A, drive it, and B, look at it in the metal.”
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The first shipments of the Kia Tasman are due in showrooms this July in dual-cab pick-up form, with the dual-cab chassis to follow in August, ahead of the single-cab chassis between October and December.
Five model grades are expected to be offered – three standard grades below the X-Line and X-Pro trims – with prices yet to be confirmed.
Recent RRPs published for the South Korean market invited speculation that it could be considerably cheaper than a Ford Ranger, but there are additional shipping and homologation costs in selling a car in Australia that may add to the final price.
“I think the whole package will be value for money,” Meredith told Drive when asked how Tasman will be positioned.
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“And everything component of that – every variable – will be well done in the whole value for money equation.”
Pressed on the importance of a sharp entry price – as it is what can draw a customer into the showroom – Meredith said: “I don’t disagree with that.
“But the fact of the matter is that we’re entering a new segment. We don’t think price is the only variable that’s going to drive success of that.
“In saying that, we’re working really, really hard on [offering] the best price. But it’s going to be the complete package, of the brand and of the product.”
MORE: 2025 Kia Tasman price revealed for South Korea, cheaper than Ford Ranger
Meredith said Kia Australia is “respectful of all [its] competition”, said “we know what we have to do”.
“Price is very important, I agree wholeheartedly. But we’re going to look at it from a total component point of view, in regards to how we enter into the market.
“We worked really, really hard on the pre-launch [phase] in regards to, we started advertising just over 12 months ago, in regards to section one.
“Section two occurs with above-the-line communication … we’ve had the car everywhere. At shows, fleet conventions, conferences, trade shows. So we’re looking at the whole aspect of it, not just the price or the marketing of it. We’re looking at the whole aspect.”
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Norbiato said the company has attracted close to 25,000 expressions of interest on the Tasman, up from 20,000 at the end of last year.
“We had a spike in November last year, [which] was when [we had] our global launch. And since the start of the NRL [football] season, we’ve had another push, gone above the line again.
“And we’ve been building out expressions of interest, sitting close to 25,000 now … up from 20,000. So we are seeing [interest] continue to build, it’s one of the top three webpages on the Kia website.
“We haven’t sold one unit, but yet the interest is definitely still there and, to be honest, growing ahead of launch.”
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The Kia executive spoke to Australian media last year about the importance of getting the Tasman out in public for potential customers to see, following criticism online of its styling.
He said opinions have begun to turn – and potential buyers grow to like the vehicle – once they see it in the metal.
“The more people that physically see this, the better off it is for the Kia brand,” Norbiato told Drive.
“We are finding that, if you look at a ratio of positive commentary – we had a Brisbane 4×4 show and we were very analytical in analysing it – 80 per cent positive commentary on the aesthetic of the product.
MORE: 2025 Kia Tasman ute hoped to rocket South Korean brand up Australian sales charts
“We are seeing the narrative change. We need to get more people to physically see it, so growing presence at launch is absolutely imperative.
“We have a limited amount of vehicles in the lead-up to launch, and we’re trying to maximise those from a visibility standpoint.
“Things like the Brisbane 4×4 show, 800-plus thousand people at the Royal Easter Show. So tactically using the vehicles to get them out en masse as well.”
A base-model, dual-cab chassis Tasman was shown at a farm show in recent days – and examples are due to be shown at the Melbourne Motor Show this weekend – while single-cab prototypes have been spied in the wild.
MORE: Kia Tasman ute design is growing on potential customers, brand says
Kia is projecting 10,000 to 11,000 Tasman sales this year – given it will have only six months to deliver the first cars – before ramping up to 20,000 in 2026.
Customers will need to come from other brands, as sales of utes in recent years have not grown as quickly as SUVs – something Toyota has declared ‘peak ute’.
“In regards to our forecasting and our internal numbering, we’ve been pretty good at saying that we’re going to do 35,000 [vehicle sales] in 2015, and we did 35,000 in 2015,” Meredith told Drive.
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“In 2017, we [said we would do] 50,000 cars, and we did 50,000 cars. So we have a tendency to look at the micro aspects of the business rather than the macro aspects of the business, that’s what drives our [forecasts].
“Great product and lots of other things drive it, but in the forecasting aspects, we do look at the micro aspects of what we have to achieve, and that’s how we work towards the number.
“So it’s right, the numbers are showing that there’s a levelling out – a decline – in LCV [light-commercial vehicles]. SUVs continue to grow.
“But the reality is we were at 28,000 [Kia vehicle sales] ten years ago, now we’re around 90,000. So we have to garner share from other manufacturers to do that, hence the bubble component of that forecast.”
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