Kia has been snapped testing the 2013 Kia Cee’d in the Alps in Europe. The car was spotted undergoing hill ascent testing towing a trailer as heavy ballast.

The next-generation Kia Cee’d will be based on the Hyundai i30 platform and will include much of the same chassis and suspension components, and range of engines. A hybrid diesel version is also said to be on the cards.

These images show, for the time, what the face of the car will look like – albeit with some disorienting paintwork. The headlights seem to be fairly similar to the current model, but the upper and lower grille take on the more modern Kia styling with their honeycomb-like pattern.

Like the current Hyundai i30, the new Cee’d will come with a range of CRDi diesel engines, possibly including a three-cylinder diesel. As we can see here, Kia is obviously making sure such variants still provide adequate torque levels, with the steep Alps providing a suitable benchmark.

The 2013 Kia Cee’d is expected to debut sometime next year. The current Cee’d was designed in Germany for the European market and is not available in Australia.