Designed, developed and engineered in Europe – a project that started off at Kia’s development center in Frankfurt, Germany, and ends at its manufacturing plant in Zilina, Slovakia – the ProCeed is a lovely-looking tourer that takes the form of a five-door shooting brake bodystyle.
This might be a niche direction for Kia, but it’s an important one. The mainstream Ceed Sportwagon champions practically, but ProCeed, which is 5mm longer but around 5mm lower, is its cooler, hipper younger brother, honing in on couples and young families that want wagon versatility with stylish design. And as has been already mentioned right at the start of the piece, ProCeed has fetching proportions and is a fine-looking thing on the road so that’s the design box ticked. It also boasts 594 liters of luggage capacity, so there’s the functionality needs met too.
Created on the same K2 platform as other Ceed models, ProCeed actually only shares the bonnet and front wings with the Ceed five-door hatchback. The GT version was engineered under the direction of developed guru Albert Biermann, Hyundai-Kia’s R&D head, and in fact six months of additional testing was worked into the program further enhance the car’s cornering agility and yaw behavior. And those 24 weeks paid off: the ProCeed GT is a really nice drive, responsive and agile for a shooting brake, making the most of the stiffer front and rear spring and increased body control to improve steering inputs. Softer front and rear anti-roll bars help keep its wheels gripping the road, even during ‘harsher’ cornering.
The ProCeed line-up features three engines: a new 1.4 Kappa T-GDi and a 1.6 CRDi. But it was the 1.6 T-GDi engine in the ProCeed GT that ETi sampled and charmed editor in chief Dean Slavnich. With lovely, almost subtle pops and bangs, the four-cylinder 1,591cc does its shooting brake job really well, adding to the ride qualities of the GT and serving 203ps at 6,000rpm and 265Nm torque from 1,500rpm to 4,500rpm. ProCeed GT also benefits of the introduction of Kia’s first 7-speed DCT, another string to a fine shooting brake bow.