Kia shows first pick-up truck with unique camouflage

Kia has revealed a full image of its first-ever pick-up truck, albeit with a unique camouflage at this time as the official debut is a year away. Earlier, it had already announced the name of the truck as Tasman, which is related to the island to the south of the Australian continent.

Kia’s Australia unit was the one that proposed the name which was chosen from many others, and as with other carmakers, Australia would have been where a lot of development work on the truck was done. It offers varied terrain that includes deserts as well as jungles (up north) and before speed limits were introduced in Alice Springs in 2016, even a place where prototypes could be tested to their top speeds.

‘The Path Never Taken’
It’s therefore fitting that Kia decided to get its designers to come up with the unique camouflage which has the rugged beauty and pioneering spirit of Tasmania for inspiration. Developed in collaboration with artist Richard Boyd-Dunlop from Australia and New Zealand, the unique wrap – themed around ‘The Path Never Taken’ – underscores the Tasman’s adventurous spirit.

The exterior wrap’s eye-catching design draws on Boyd-Dunlop’s adventures, hitching rides in the back of pick-up trucks across Australia. It is influenced by the untamed beauty of Australia’s diverse landscapes, with the unique graphics visualize a journey of inspiration encountered while driving along the coast and across the outback.

Reflects an essence of adventure
“Our Tasman pickup truck embodies Kia’s commitment to design and innovation, as well as its spirit of adventure. Artist Richard Boyd-Dunlop crafted an exclusive camouflage design, with the support of the Kia design team, that depicts a journey and reflects an essence of adventure that is unique to the Tasman,” said Karim Habib, Executive Vice-President and Head of Kia Global Design.

“This design resonates as it evokes my own personal experiences travelling across Australia and the encounters that I had,” explained Boyd-Dunlop. “These experiences are influential to my work, and the Tasman enabled me to create a continuation of this, depicting the connection, joy, and sheer sense of adventure that is inherent to Australian culture.”

Scheduled to make its debut in 2025, the Tasman marks Kia’s first entry into the C-segment pick-up truck segment. It is not Kia’s first pick-up truck as the company has been making models like the K-Series for decades, but these have been for commercial use whereas the Tasman will be for the lifestyle market that has been growing since the 1990s.

Like the other trucks in the market, the Tasman will have a dual-purpose capability for those who want to use it for work. With models like the Toyota Hilux, Isuzu D-MAX, Mitsubishi Triton, Nissan Navara and Ford Ranger being well established and popular in ASEAN market, Kia will not start off in the region. Instead, it will be focussing first on Australia, Africa, and the Middle East. Korea is also going to be an early market for the Tasman as there is growing interest in lifestyle pick-up trucks.

Kia names its first lifestyle truck after an Australian island