Over the past two years, rumours surrounding Kia’s upcoming double-cab bakkie have been surfacing with many suggesting that the project has already been greenlit by the higher-ups. The latest round of rumours surrounding this product however, signifies that the final product won’t arrive as soon as we initially expected.
According to information sourced from carsguide, although Kia’s upcoming double-cab bakkie has not been shelved, the production timings have shifted together with a concerted effort to maintain limited information. An initial arrival date of 2022 is “not going to happen” according to Kia Australia COO Damien Meredith.
“We would hope that in the next couple of years that something does occur with LCV for our brand, not just for Australia but globally.
“The good thing is that if it does occur then I think we’ll have a lot of ownership on it, because we’re a big market.
“But 2022, unless they’re hiding things from us, is not going to happen.”
Meredith believes that Kia’s upcoming double-cab bakkie would be a huge success in Australia and even informed his HQ that as many as 20 000 sales per year could be the result of its entry into the market where, similarly to ours, the Toyota Hilux and Ford Ranger reign dominantly.
“If it did occur then we’ve have a fair bit of equity in it, because we’re a big part of it,” he said. “I think, if it happened, we’d be probably looking 10 per cent of LCV sales, so let’s hope it does happen.
“We got asked the question three or four years ago, and we were asked how many could we do, and I said we could do 20 000, and people almost fell off their chairs.
“They were blown away. At that time it was 20 per cent of the LCV market, which I thought was reasonable in terms of what we could do.
“I haven’t changed my view on that. It’s up to Korea HQ. We haven’t been given any validation that it’s going ahead at this point.”
