GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Kia unveils its hottest hatch ever

Kia's first bone fide hot-hatch has been officially revealed ahead of its world debut at the Geneva motor show in March and remains a good chance for release in Australia this year.

Pictured here for the first time is the three-door pro_cee’d GT, which along with the five-door cee’d GT will be powered by the same 150kW/265Nm 1.6-litre turbocharged direct-injected four-cylinder engine seen in sister brand Hyundai’s Veloster SR Turbo.

Matched with a six-speed manual transmission, Kia says the GDI turbo-petrol four will accelerate the front-wheel drive GT range-toppers to 100km/h in 7.9 seconds, putting it in a similar ballpark to Volkswagen’s outgoing Golf GTI, which outputs 155kW/280Nm and can hit 7.6 seconds.

As we reported previously, the hot cee’d GT hatchbacks are under serious consideration for release in Australia alongside Kia’s closely related new Cerato hatch, which arrives here in April, and their future at the top of the local Cerato line-up is expected to be known by the time their debut at the Geneva.

The pro_cee’d GT and cee’d GT will be unveiled at Swiss show alongside an as-yet-unnamed Kia concept, teaser images of which indicate it could be the new-generation Cerato Koup, which will also go on sale here later this year and will also come in for the GT treatment.

Apart from revealing the pro_cee’d GT in action, the first official images also show a heavily modified sports interior with a black and red theme similar to the Golf GTI’s, including black leather-clad Recaro front seats and a matching sports steering wheel with piano-black highlights, red stitching and GT badge.

Designed in Europe under the direction of Kia President and Chief Design Officer, Peter Schreyer, both models also feature four LED daytime running lights that form a square above the foglights, twin black exhaust outlets and more aggressive front and rear bumpers.

All this rides on 18-inch alloy wheels that frame red brake callipers.

The most performance-focussed models yet seen from Kia will enter production at Zilina in Slovakia in mid-May, before hitting European showrooms in mid-2013.

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