Five of Kia's coolest concept cars

Stratos. Intercepter. Vanquish. Sidewinder. As car names go, this surely ranks up there with the best, and the car itself was promising as well. Produced as part of a design competition at the 2006 LA Motor Show, it was envisaged as a specialist drift racer (yes, really). A hydrogen turbine feeding a series of in-wheel, high torque electric motors would’ve enabled the car to “hold the ultimate slip angle”, building on the then-trend in LA of officially sanctioned drifting events. Another version was also modeled with the iconic Gulf livery. All seem too good to be true? That’s because it was - the Sidewinder never made it past the drawing board. Boo, and indeed, hiss.

Words: James Smalley

Annoying apostrophe aside, this Kia Soul-based concept was billed as a 250bhp hot hatch designed to take the fight to Ford and Renaultsport. Certainly looked the part, with its squat stance, racy colour scheme and massively-flared rear arches. Beneath the aggressive bodywork sat a turbocharged 2.0-litre in-line four-cyl, and it meant serious business inside as well, with storage bins for racing paraphernalia, and a distinct lack of rear seats.

Unfortunately, there were never any plans to make this car a reality, and it would be another year before we saw a vaguely-hot Kia hatch in the form of the pro_cee’d GT.

Seemingly the pre-cursor to the upcoming Frankfurt concept, the angry-looking Novo (from the Latin for “innovation”) was revealed at the 2015 Seoul Motor Show and previewed styling for upcoming Kias. This was more of a design showcase than an engineering one; at the time, the press release mentioned the aesthetic bits such as the “tiger-nose” grille, triangular exhausts and large front wheel arches at length, whereas the powertrain and mechanicals received barely more than a sentence. The introduction of “suicide” rear doors made Kia one of the only manufacturers to feature them, but as with a lot of things in this article, we’ve yet to see them on a production Kia.