Are Kia and Hyundai utes still coming to Australia? Executives remain tight lipped

The future of the much anticipated double-cab utes from sister brands Hyundai and Kia – designed to challenge the top-selling Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger – remain shrouded in secrecy.

Have the Hyundai and Kia utes been quietly dropped, delayed, or are they just being kept under wraps?

Sales of utes and vans are currently at record levels locally, representing the second-biggest vehicle segment in Australia, ahead of passenger cars and behind SUVs.

Hyundai has just released the car-derived Santa Cruz in the US (pictured throughout this story) but it is a based on a soft-roader rather than a heavy duty workhorse.

Hyundai Australia executives remain tight-lipped on the possibility of having a Toyota HiLux rival, despite the runaway success of the vehicle which has topped the Australian new-car sales charts for five years and is on track to notch up a sixth win.

The South Korean partner brands – Hyundai and Kia – have reportedly been working together on the vehicle for at least the past four years.

It usually takes about five years to transform a vehicle from a design sketch and into a showroom reality.

Based on that timing, the Hyundai and Kia ute twins could have been in showrooms in 2022, however it appears that timeline has been pushed back, possibly indefinitely.

We still haven’t got a clear direction from what’s going to happen with LCV (ute), that is the honest truth,” said Damien Meredith, the boss of Kia Australia, in a roundtable meeting with media this week.

“We would hope in the next couple of years that something does occur in the LCV (ute) space for our brand, not just in Australia but globally.”

The Kia executive said if such a vehicle were to go into production, Australia would likely have close involvement with its development.

“If it does occur, I think we will have a lot of ownership of it because obviously we are a big market (for utes),” said Mr Meredith. “If development did occur we would probably have a fair bit of equity in that (vehicle) because we would be a big part of it.”

Other key regions for such a vehicle include the Middle East, South America and other parts of Asia, the company said.

Kia Australia said it had forecast to take a 10 per cent slice of the booming ute market, and it could be another driver of its sales growth.

“If (a ute) happened we’d be looking at 10 per cent of LCV (ute) sales,” said Mr Meredith. “Let’s hope it does happen because we might even do better than Top Five.”

When asked if the jointly-developed Hyundai and Kia ute had been scrapped, or if there was a chance it was coming next year, Mr Meredith said: “There’s been no talk (about 2022) … unless they’ve been hiding things from us.”

When pressed further about whether or not the project was dead or alive, Mr Meredith said: “No-one from Korea has sat down with me (to discuss it). We got asked the question three years ago, four years ago ‘how many can you (sell)?’ And I said we could do 20,000 (a year). All the Koreans nearly fell off their chairs … they were blown away with the figure.”

Mr Meredith said at that point in time, 20,000 ute sales annually represented 10 per cent of the total ute segment, “which I thought was fair and reasonable with what we knew at the time, and I haven’t changed my view on that”. 

The Kia executive said: “It’s up to Kia HQ whether they want to make the call to go ahead or not go ahead (with a ute). We have not been given any validation that it’s going ahead at this point in time.”

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