The 2025 Kia Tasman is a big deal for both the Korean car-maker and the wider auto industry, which is why Kia is drawing plenty of attention to the upcoming reveal of its all-new pick-up.
With the reveal now set to happen within months, ahead of its mid-2025 release, Kia has released a video trailer for a new documentary series that’s set to detail the rigorous durability testing the Tasman is undergoing before it becomes the biggest threat to the established ute leaders in decades.
To underline the extent of the Tasman’s Australian-led development program, the series has been dubbed ‘One More Round’ and Kia says prototypes have undergone no fewer than 1777 specific tests across more than 18,000 rounds of evaluation, both Down Under and abroad.
The first episode will be released on July 22 and focus on off-road testing, with subsequent episodes set to showcase the Tasman’s wading capability, all-terrain durability, towing ability, outright performance and ride/handling prowess, and feature interviews with the research and development team.
“The Kia Tasman represents our unwavering dedication to innovation,” said Kia R&D boss Heui Won Yang.
“Every aspect of our R&D Division’s capability has been channelled into creating a vehicle that not only lives up to its title as the first of its kind, but also delivers performance that surpasses expectations.”
Kia says the episodes will be released between July and October, all but confirming the Tasman will make its world debut in the fourth quarter of this year.
Official details are still thin on the ground, but the documentary series will steadily reveal the highly-anticipated new model’s key performance, capability and mechanical highlights.
And Kia Australia has previously confirmed there’ll be a full range of body styles and drivetrains to compete with Australia’s top-selling vehicles including the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux.
The core range will be powered by a variation of Kia’s familiar 2.2-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel, but there have been murmurs of the discontinued Stinger sports sedan’s petrol V6 sneaking into the range somewhere – almost certainly at the top of the tree in a performance flagship that could rival the Ford Ranger Raptor.
It seems these whispers could prove accurate because the vehicle in this latest teaser sounds more like a high-revving petrol six than any diesel engine – at least during the snippet of tow testing about halfway through the trailer.
After that the sound of a V8 has been dubbed over to make the video clip more dynamic and exciting.
Only time will tell for sure, but there’s little doubt the new Tasman is and will continue to cause quite a stir.