Kia K4

New family car's bold styling masks traditional tech and fuss-free interior design to ruffle the Volkswagen Golf's feathers On sale Early 2026 Price from £25,995

- By OLIVER YOUNG

THEY SAY YOU can't teach an old dog new tricks, but what if that statement was reversed and posed as a question: can you teach a new dog old tricks? The Kia K4 has the answer.

You see, it's brand new and rather striking, with a model name you're unlikely to be familiar with. Some will be reassured, though, that beneath its avant-garde exterior, the K4 does things the old-fashioned way. It's a petrol-engined family car to replace the Kia Ceed, and that makes it a rival for the class-leading Toyota Corolla, fine-driving Seat Leon and ever-popular Volkswagen Golf.

The 147bhp 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol engine of the late-stage K4 prototype we've driven wasn't quite production spec; we're told that its turbocharger will be replaced with a more responsive one, and that's good news, because the engine took half a second to properly wake up at times. That said, with its loins fully girded the test car accelerated with some punch, and a more powerful 177bhp version will also be offered.

Both 1.6-litre engines are available solely with a seven-speed automatic gearbox; an entry-level 113bhp 1.0-litre three-cylinder mild hybrid (MHEV) will bring a manual gearbox to the lineup in due course, and a full hybrid (HEV) model is also in the works.