Signs Point To Success For Funky Looking Kia Tasman

Kia has a history of body-on-frame, off-road vehicles. It has built military vehicles for decades, and it has offered a number of SUVs with the classic construction, including the original Sportage and Sorento, plus the short-lived Borrego. Still, pickup trucks are a new market for the company broadly, and it made a statement with the 2025 Tasman. No one can deny, it’s a weird-looking thing, with the decision of that being a good thing or a bad thing left to the beholder. According to Australian car news outlet Drive, people are starting to land on the side of it being good.

Sales Could Be Strong

A reporter for Drive spoke with a representative from Kia who cited that people like the looks more after seeing it in person, and orders are climbing. They’ve apparently reached 20,000, and that’s the bottom end of what Kia was targeting for annual sales. Drive highlighted that those sales could push it to be the fourth bestseller in the pickup market behind the Ford Ranger, Toyota HiLux and Isuzu D-Max. We should note that this segment is seriously packed in Australia and southeast Asia. Other competitors include segment veterans such as the Mitsubishi Triton, Nissan Navara, Mazda BT-50 and Volkswagen Amarok among others. Chinese automakers are joining in, too, with Great Wall already offering a truck, and BYD introducing its new Shark pickup. So it would be impressive for any newcomer to end up so high in the sales charts.

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America Remains A Question Mark

If the Tasman could be a success in Australia, it naturally begs the question of whether it might have a shot in America. It’s possible, but it would face a number of hurdles. The biggest one is that Kia would practically be forced to set up production in North America to get around the 25% Chicken Tax tariff on foreign pickup trucks. Adding American production would be expensive, and sales would have to make it worthwhile. This is another potential issue, since truck buyers in America are very loyal, and getting buyers away from their beloved Tacomas, Rangers and Colorados will be tough.

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We think this would be a hit, perhaps even more so than the pickup.

There are two things that could help the possibility of a Tasman in America. People have speculated that an SUV could be spun off the Tasman to compete against vehicles such as the Toyota 4Runner, Jeep Wrangler, and Ford Bronco. The off-road SUV business is strong, and a Tasman SUV could appeal to people who want something more refined than the Ford and Jeep with their removable roofs and doors. It would be exempt from the Chicken Tax as a passenger vehicle, and not a truck, so it could be built somewhere else. If sales were strong enough, Kia could potentially open a plant in the U.S. to build both the SUV and the truck. Furthermore, there’s an electric version of the Tasman in development that could surely underpin an SUV, too. As EV demand grows, companies will be looking for more options, and this would be an interesting one to launch with competitors mainly being Rivian, Scout, and Jeep for the foreseeable future.

Source:
Drive