All-new Picanto City Car majors on quality, technology and versatility

• Public debut for new A-segment city car at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show

• Bold, new exterior design and modern cabin with ‘floating’ touchscreen

• New in-car technologies and connectivity features, including Android and Apple smartphone integration and a wireless smartphone charger

• Quieter, more spacious cabin, with the largest cargo capacity in its class

• Stronger body and enhanced safety, with Autonomous Emergency Braking

• Enhanced handling, aided by new torque vectoring system

• Most powerful Picanto ever and first-ever turbocharged gasoline engine, with new 1.0litre T-GDI on sale during Q4 2017.

• 1.0-litre MPI capable of just 89g/km CO2

• On sale in Europe from the start of Q2 2017

The all-new Kia Picanto city car has been revealed to European media for the first time today ahead of its public debut at the 2017 Geneva International Motor Show in March. The new Picanto will go on sale across Europe from the start of Q2 2017.

Now in its third-generation, the new Kia Picanto brings a new, more youthful and energetic character to the A-segment. Boasting an assertive new design and a high-quality, high-tech new cabin, the latest model also offers buyers greater potential for customisation and promises to be the most versatile car in its class.

The new Picanto will be powered by one of three petrol engines, including Kia’s new 1.0-litre turbocharged gasoline direct injection (T-GDI) power unit. When the new 1.0-litre TGDI engine goes on sale during Q4 2017, it will be the most powerful engine ever offered in the Picanto, and the first time this car has offered a turbocharged petrol engine.

Worldwide, more than 1.4 million of the current-generation Picanto have been sold since it was launched in 2011, with more than 300,000 of those sold in Europe. Despite the car approaching the end of its lifecycle in showrooms, Kia sold more than 55,000 Picanto models in Europe in 2016, representing year-on-year sales growth of three per cent.

Exterior design

The all-new Picanto has been created by Kia’s design centres in Namyang, Korea and Frankfurt, Germany, collaborating to design a youthful, energetic look.

Briefed to produce an innovative, bold and fun-looking urban city car, designers have followed up on the mandate to full effect, giving the new Picanto a more assertive stance with bolder body lines.

With the wheelbase extended to 2,400 mm (an increase of 15 mm), the wheels have been pushed further out to the corners of the car for a 25 mm shorter front overhang, making the car look more planted on the road. Strong, straight lines run horizontally across the front of the car, emphasising the ‘tiger-nose’ grille and angular new wrap-around headlights. Vertical lines that encompass the side intakes and lower grille enhance the Picanto’s more confident new ‘face’.

In profile, the new Picanto is characterised by distinctive lines running along the side skirts, shoulder and around the wheel arches, and subtly-sculpted body surfacing – again, each helping to create a more confident on-road design and visually ‘stretching’ the car for a greater sense of ride stability – although the Picanto is no longer than the outgoing model, at 3,595 mm in length.

The new model adopts Kia’s wide C-pillar as a design motif, which stands more upright than that of the previous model. Combined with a longer rear overhang – up 10 mm, to 520 mm – for a more assured posture.

The all-new Picanto will offers buyers greater potential for customisation than ever before, with a choice of 11 vibrant paint finishes designed to make the car stand out. Among the six new colours available to buyers is ‘Lime Light’, ‘Shiny Red’, ‘Aurora Black’ ‘Pop Orange’, ‘Sparkling Silver’ and ‘Celestial Blue’ pearlescent metallic paint finishes. The Picanto is fitted with 14-inch steel wheels in its most basic form, and customers can select one of four aluminium alloy wheel designs, ranging from 14-inch to 16-inch in diameter.

The exterior of the Picanto is also complemented by new projection headlights with LED indicators and LED daytime running lights and from Q3 2017, a subtle shark-fin antenna on the roof to replace the existing aerial.

For the first time, Kia will also offer the Picanto in a new ‘GTLine’ specification, inspired by the sportier appearance of the company’s higher-performance ‘GT’ models, such as the Optima GT. In GT-Line specification, the exterior of the new Picanto is completed with red, silver and black highlights in the grille, side intakes, along the side skirts and in the rear valance, as well as chrome-tipped twin exhausts.

Interior design

Inside the new Picanto, Kia designers have created a more modern, refined cabin than the second-generation model, with new materials and layout adding a greater sense of quality for occupants. The predominantly horizontal design adds greater visual

width to the interior, highlighting the increased cabin dimensions.

The dashboard layout is now more centrally aligned, with a large 7.0-inch ‘floating’ touchscreen HMI (human-machine interface) sitting at the heart of the centre console and moving many of the car’s controls further up into the driver’s line of sight. A satin chrome-effect strip runs across the dashboard for a higher quality ambience, and large, vertical air vents at either end ‘bookend’ the front passenger compartment.

Customisation is key to the appeal of the new Picanto’s cabin. While black and grey cloth seats are available as standard, buyers can also personalise their new Picanto with one of five optional colour packs, featuring contrast artificial leather upholstery and stitching. Available at launch, these colour packs are:

High Gloss Black – a combination of black, grey and white upholstery with white stitching (and available with a black or grey base colour)

Brown – brown seats with light blue flashes down the side and light blue stitching

Blue – navy and true blue artificial leather and cloth upholstery with white and orange stitching

Red – black and grey seats with red flashes and red stitching

Lime – grey and light grey upholstery with lime green stitching

The contrast colours of the seats can be paired with optional new colour pads on the door armrests, echoing the contrast scheme selected for the seats. Finally, the Picanto’s new GT-Line derivative will be equipped with a D-cut steering wheel. The interior of the GT-Line model will be available with the full range of colour packs.

Ride and handling

The outgoing Kia Picanto won plaudits for its combination of immediate handling responses and a comfortable ride. Engineers have emulated these characteristics in the new model, while making a series of modifications to the suspension – independent by MacPherson strut at the front; torsion beam at the rear – to realise greater ride stability and quicker, more enjoyable handling responses.

Designed to reduce the body roll angle under cornering by up to 1° and enable more immediate reactions to steering inputs, the Picanto’s anti-roll bars are two per cent stiffer and mounted slightly lower at the front, and five per cent stiffer and slightly higher at the rear. The Picanto’s revised dimensions – with a longer wheelbase and slightly shorter front overhang – also enable the pitch centre of the car to be placed further towards the rear of the car, helping to naturally reduce ‘nose dive’ under braking without firming up the suspension and potentially compromising ride comfort.

In addition, the longer wheelbase contributes to a natural improvement in ride quality and stability on all roads. The torsion beam rear axle has been reshaped and features newly-designed trailing arms, helping to reduce weight by 1.8 kg over the rear axle with no loss in component rigidity.

A new steering rack means the steering ratio has been quickened by 13 per cent over the outgoing Picanto, from 16.5:1 to 14.3:1. Not only does this enable more immediate responses to driver inputs, but reducing the turns of the wheel lock-to-lock (from 3.4 to 2.8 turns) makes the Picanto even easier to drive at low speeds and in the city. With the front wheel pushed closer to the front of the vehicle, resulting in a shorter overhang, the reduced weight ahead of the front axle reduces inertia for more agile handling.

The new Picanto is the first car in its class to offer buyers torque vectoring by braking – an additional function of the Electronic Stability Control system (ESC; see ‘Safety’). The adoption of this new technology for an A-segment car means the Picanto retains a higher degree of handling stability and security under cornering, while helping to reduce understeer during harder cornering.

Technology

Buyers of the new Kia Picanto will have access to some of the most advanced infotainment and convenience technologies available in the A-segment, while still enjoying the same high value for money expected of a Kia vehicle.

The large, ‘floating’ 7.0-inch HMI touchscreen at the centre of the dashboard houses a navigation system with 3D map, and is available with Apple CarPlay™ and Android Auto™ for full smartphone integration. A rearview parking camera with dynamic guidelines is also on offer to buyers who want an additional level of assurance when completing parking manoeuvres. An optional wireless smartphone charger and USB port, located at the base of the centre console, ensure drivers can keep mobile devices charged on the move.

Safety and body

The new Picanto is the safest Asegment car Kia has ever made, featuring double the proportion of Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) compared to the outgoing model and a selection of active safety technologies.

With a stronger body than ever before, 44 per cent of the new Picanto’s bodyshell is cast in AHSS (up from 22 per cent), reducing body-in-white weight by 23 kg while improving tensile strength by 12 per cent. The new, stronger steel has been used to reinforce the floor pan, roof rails and engine bay, as well as the A- and Bpillars, strengthening the core structure of the car. The new bodyshell also uses more than eight times the quantity of structural adhesive found in the outgoing model (67 metres of joins throughout the structure are now reinforced with the adhesive). Overall, static torsional stiffness has been improved by 32 per cent.

The stronger, lighter body is supported by six standard airbags (front, front side and curtain airbags), and an optional knee airbag, as well as a range of active safety features. These include standard Vehicle Stability Management (VSM) with Electronic Stability Control (ESC) to ensure stability under braking and cornering, detecting a loss in traction and using ESC to help the driver keep the car on course.

In addition, the new Picanto will be available with Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB)* – a key technology adopted to enhance safety in the predominantly city and urban environments in which the majority of customers drive their Picanto. An indirect Tyre Pressure Monitoring System is also available.

On-sale

Maintaining the value for money and high quality that has made the current-generation Picanto so popular, the all-new Picanto will be sold as standard with Kia’s unique 7-Year, 100,000 mile warranty when it goes on-sale across Europe from the start of Q2 2017.