Kia doesn’t usually go in for the eye-catching, or eye-distracting, swirly camouflage wraps other automakers use to disguise their prototypes. But this 2026 Tasman pickup looks more like a BMW art car than a still-secret truck. The Tasman is Kia’s answer to the Ford Ranger and in all previous sightings, it’s worn the big, black padded camo that the Korean brands love to swaddle their new vehicles in. You know, the ones that look like those superhero costumes with the built-in muscles.
But mixed-media artist Richard Boyd-Dunlop
has added a welcome splash of color in the form of a wrap that visualizes a
journey across the outback and along the coasts of Australia. Boyd-Dunlop
claims the design takes inspiration from his time hitch-hiking rides in the
back of pickup trucks through the country in years past. Kia says the wrap will
remain in place until the truck is ready for launch at some point in 2025, but
while we might still have to wait a year to see the outside of the Tasman minus
its disguise, we already know what it looks like on the inside. That’s thanks
to this TikTok video taken by someone who had access to a prototype and
probably shouldn’t have.
It shows an interior that borrows heavily
from the Kia’s electric EV9 SUV and offers plenty of luxury features in its
highest trim levels. But maybe Kia’s design team ought to have got Boyd-Dunlop
and his crayons involved because it’s very, very gray. Kia’s C-segment truck is
aimed at markets like Korea, Australia, Africa, and the Middle East, but is
unlikely to appear in the U.S. unless Kia decides to build it there. That’s due
to the ‘chicken tax,’ a 25 percent levy on imported pickups that dates back to
the 1960s.
Images and videos on the web showing
prototypes testing in North America in recent months, and Kia’s description of
it being a ‘global’ truck, started rumors that the Tasman might come to the
U.S., but Kia told us not to read too much into the sightings. Earlier this
month Kia announced that the truck would be called Tasman after both the Tasman
Sea between Australia and New Zealand and explorer Abel Tasman, who discovered
Australia’s island state of Tasmania. It also revealed that the truck would
feature a diesel powertrain, which is almost certainly a 2.2-liter,
four-cylinder CRDi engine, while reports suggest that the body-on-frame
architecture is shared with the second generation Kia Mohave SUV, and dates
back to the 2008 Kia Borrego.
