2025 Kia Tasman to hit the road

In a bold attempt to move the debate past its controversial exterior design, Kia Australia will stage an “unprecedented” Kia Tasman road show to potential private and fleet buyers months ahead of its on-sale date.

The massive demonstration of marketing and sales muscle is expected to commence in March 2025, at least four months before the Tasman ute goes on-sale in Australia.

“To us it’s a matter of getting bums in seats as soon as possible,” Kia Australia chief operating officer Dennis Piccoli told carsales.

Kia Australia wants to sell between 20,000 and 25,000 Tasmans annually, which would place the new ute in the top four of its segment and boost Kia into the fight for second place on the overall new vehicle sales ladder.

But a brutal public reception for the exterior styling of the Tasman has placed that sales objective under stress.

Kia, however, is arguing that potential buyers seeing the vehicle in the metal and driving it will help shore up the sales ambition.

“Clearly there has been a fair bit of controversy around it,” Piccoli said of the Tasman’s exterior. “But obviously they [critics] haven’t seen the car and it’s an evolutionary process.

“There is established players out there, be it Toyota, be it Ford, be it Isuzu. We have to break through. The reality is a same-same design is not going to work.

“We need to have something different.”

While the exact number of Tasmans available to Kia for its pre-launch campaign is still to be confirmed via negotiations with HQ in Korea, the tally will be significant based on the plans Piccoli outlined.

“There are ongoing negotiations [with Korea] in terms of building up an evaluation fleet … and build up the capability of our dealer network in terms of the training side of things – getting them to touch and feel the cars.

“Then we will go into road shows ahead of the car’s launch and then we will utilise a shotgun approach wherein the entire network, our fleet department and various fleet organisations have use of the car, so we get people in there driving it.

“At this stage we’d like to have road shows in play at the end of the first quarter beginning of the second quarter, a few months ahead of when the car’s going go to market.”

The Tasman launch line-up comprises five dual-cabs – one entry level 4x2, two 4x4 dual cab chassis, two 4x4 single cab chassis – and one entry-level 4x2 single cab chassis.

The two highest spec Tasmans have been confirmed as the X-Line and the flagship off-roader X-Pro. Other localised model names swill be revealed closer to launch.

All Tasmans will be powered by a 2.2-litre turbo-diesel engine, include 3500kg braked towing and a 1000kg-plus payload (although less than one tonne is available for novated leases). A five-star ANCAP rating that’s crucial for fleet purchases is anticipated.

Kia expects fleet buyers will make up a large portion of the Tasman audience. Piccoli forecast corporate and government fleet would account for 50 per cent of volume and private/tradie buyers the other 50 per cent.

This splits the difference between the market-leading Ford Ranger which skews private/tradie and its arch-rival the Toyota HiLux which skews fleet.

Kia Australia marketing general manager Dean Norbiato described the road show as “unprecedented”.

“It [pre-promotion] usually kicks off at production time with production-spec cars and you tour them around. We are looking to get well ahead of that, upwards of four to five months ahead and invite customers in to see them.

“We want to get to every dealer prior to launch and let them invite their local PMA (primary marketing area) in to see the car, because we do believe fundamentally from a dependability point of view it’s going to be heavily skewed towards fleet.

“We just need to get more people to sit in and see it and take it for a drive and test that capability. That’s on us to get as many people as possible in that vehicle.”

Kia has aggressively touted the Tasman’s driving ability on- and especially off-road since launch, so much so it’s publicly benchmarked the Ranger.

Piccoli revealed that previews of the Tasman ahead of its launch had been more positive than the online commentary.

“We’ve had various focus groups over the last few days, equally we’ve had corporates in, fleets in and our dealers in and the dealer network is responsible for selling the product.

“And the feedback generally speaking has been positive both in terms of the way the car looks from the outside and the inside.

“There is a general level of confidence in moving forward and hitting the numbers we need to achieve.”

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