The Kia GT is Set for a 2017 Debut

2011 Kia GT Concept (Credit: © Kia)

A few years back, an insider let me in on the secret that Kia was actually planning to create a production-ready version of its GT concept. While intriguing and newsworthy, I took the report with a grain of salt. Today, a new report from Auto Car all but confirms the GT’s arrival in 2017.

For now, the details surrounding the production GT remain under tight lock and key, but the report claims that we’ll get our first look at the new model at the Paris Auto Show this year. Unsurprisingly, this new sedan will be a stylistic combination of the GT and GT4 Stinger concepts.

The positioning of the new sedan is also interesting, as it will sit atop a range of GT models that will deliver higher performance than anyone ever thought from Kia. Included in this lineup will be the already unveiled Procee’d GT and Optima GT, and a new Fiesta ST competitor known as the Rio GT.

Kia GT4 Stinger (Credit: © Kia)

The powertrain under the skin of the production GT remains a mystery for now. What is known is that the GT4 Stinger used a 2.0-liter boosted four-pot to deliver a respectable 315 horsepower. While that is great for a 2,900-pound sports coupe like the GT4 Stinger, the GT concept was a good bit larger. Given the production GT falls somewhere in the of the larger four-door and the small coupe, I would expect an engine that delivers closer to 400 horses.

A likely culprit would be a retuned version of the 3.3-liter twin-turbo V-6 that is set to rest under the hood of the new Genesis G90. This engine produces 365 horsepower in the G90, but 400-plus ponies wouldn’t be a stretch.

At this point, your guess is as good as mine, so we’ll all just have to wait until the GT debuts in Paris in October 1, 2016. Stay tuned for more details.