Kia cee’d Ready for Production
When Kia showed off the cee’d concept car a couple of months ago, we thought it was yet another nice-looking, near-production concept car with a funny name. Well, it turns out that Kia didn’t quite find it entirely odd, because the production car that will be launched at this year’s Paris motor show will actually be called c’eed, lower-case letter ‘c’ and all.
Pronounced “seed”, in case you didn’t know, the c’eed is a bit of a self-nomer. The ‘c’, stands for C-Segment, which is the vehicle segment it competes with. This includes cars like the VW Golf/Rabbit, Honda Civic, and a whole whack more. Kia also says that together with the first ‘e’, the “ce” stands for “Community European”, which is the market it’s aimed at. The final two letters, “e’d” stand for European Design. Together, it’s Kia’s new “seed” for the European market.
Anyhow, the cee’d is a nice looking five-door hatchback, and one of the most stylish vehicles that the brand’s created to date, and breaks with the current European trend of tall hatchbacks. it will be fitted with a variety of uninteresting engines but efficient engines and a choice of manual and automatic gearboxes. The cee’d will debut at Paris, will be built in Kia’s Slovakia plant, and should be on the road by December. Unfortunately, by the looks of things, it won’t be sold in North America.