Peter Schreyer, chief designer at Kia, has a simple if sweeping ambition - he wants to change the whole world's perception of the brand, starting with the new Sportage, due in South Africa in mid-August 2010.
It was launched at the Geneva auto show in March, 2010.
He explained: "I want to give Kia global appeal and I want that appeal to be about design - and the new Sportage is a major step towards achieving that. It's fresh and bold and it couldn't anything other than a Kia."
"We've taken the key features of an off-road vehicle - sturdiness, raised ground clearance and a commanding driving position - and wrapped them in smooth, urban-friendly styling to make the Sportage fit its name perfectly."
It's longer, lower and wider than the model it replaces and has Schreyer's signature grille design - the "tiger face"- that links all new Kia models. Its visual links to the 2007 Kue show car are difficult to ignore.
Schreyer said: "We started work on the Sportage about three years ago, working with the design teams here in Frankfurt and in California. There were two divergent trains of thought: one idea was a tougher and more off-roadish theme, the other an agile and urban-friendly style.
"We tried both, moved to sketches and quarter-scale models, then picked three of the most promising ones and created full-sized models. That took less than four months out of a design process of only 18 months, which makes Kia very flexible."
Massimo Frascella, head of exterior design for the Sportage project, said: "Most compact SUV's are used mainly in an urban environment but still look like utility vehicles. We wanted to change that."
The trademark "tiger" frames the grille and includes the headlights, reinforced by the clamshell bonnet and raised shoulders, creating a three-dimensional face for the new Sportage, and they also help the driver place the car accurately on the road."
Schreyer explained the key design element of the new Sportage was the relationship between its high shoulders and narrow glasshouse, "like a sports car," he said. "The side windows are very narrow, which gives you an almost rally-car feeling."
The shoulder and roof lines meet at the reverse-angled C pillar.
"The size, the shape and the proportion of the C pillar is absolutely crucial on any car," Schreyer said.
The new Sportage is slightly lower than the model, but its styling makes it look a lot lower, with a shoulder line running the length of the car from head to tail lights.
'IN' RATHER THAN 'ON'
How do you inject real "sportiness" into a compact SUV with a high seating position?
Ralph Kluge, head of interior design, explained: "You need to feel connected and cocooned by sitting 'in' rather than 'on' the vehicle so we used a horizontal fascia layout to make the cabin feel wider.
"Then we added a high centre console and rising feature lines on the doors to make you feel as though you're sitting inside of a sporty coupe rather than in an SUV.
"The main feature of the fascia as a 'wing' that joins audio system, air-vents and instrument cluster into one clean, sweeping form. It sits in a deep cut-out that emphasises a second tier of controls for the heating and ventilation.
"This two-tier design stretches across the cabin unlike conventional upright blocky SUV interiors.