Kia considered a Ram 1500, Ford F-150 rival

With the Tasman, Kia is finally rolling out a rival to the Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger, but it considered an even larger model to take on big names from the US.

Kia is rolling out the Tasman in markets like ours, while it has also previously confirmed a separate dedicated electric ute – which CarExpert understands will be larger – that’s expected to be built in the US.

“The first case study that was actually studied was for North America, to take on… the Ram [1500], F-150. That hasn’t eventuated,” Kia Australia product planning general manager Roland Rivero told CarExpert.

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“Then from that idea and that business case for North America [Kia went] ‘Let’s look at other opportunities and gaps in the Kia product range’ and the smaller brother, the Tasman, came to life.

“The global business case for Tasman worked out to be far bigger an opportunity than the individual North American model.”

Mr Rivero didn’t specify when this case study was conducted, but Kia has previously confirmed Tasman development began in 2020.

The Tasman will be sold not only in Australia, but also various markets across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

An F-150 rival, in contrast, would likely have been sold across a smaller pool of markets, albeit with the major US market being one of them.

The Tasman hasn’t been confirmed for the US, where tariffs on light commercial vehicles – referred to as the Chicken Tax – would require Kia to build it locally lest it prove prohibitively expensive for its segment.

The segment is much less diverse in the US than it is here, with top sellers like the Mazda BT-50, Mitsubishi Triton and Volkswagen Amarok not offered there.

Kia Australia had been pushing for a HiLux rival for some time.

“I think that’s the role of corporate headquarters is always to keep studying market opportunities around the world, and a big F-150, Ram-like vehicle was studied and has not been given the green light,” continued Mr Rivero.

“As they do, they study all the respective regional opportunities and that was studied and unfortunately that didn’t get the green light.

“When you study a new addition, as always you haven’t got a definitive timeline. It goes through a process and then when it passes a certain stage, then you look at it for that next phase as well, but if it didn’t even pass that first phase no timeline ever really existed.”

While the F-150 rival never eventuated, Kia has offered large V8-powered SUVs and sedans in the US market with the Borrego and K900. The former lasted a single model year, while the latter sold in small volumes.

Kia’s Ram rival, too, would have faced serious headwinds.

Toyota leads the segment below in the US, with its Tacoma outselling the Ford Ranger, Chevrolet Colorado,
GMC Canyon, Jeep Gladiator and Nissan Frontier.

But even mighty Toyota has never been able to come close in terms of sheer sales volumes to the pickups from the American Big 3 – the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado, GMC Sierra and Ram 1500 – with its Tundra.

In the US, according to sales data published by Good Car Bad Car, Toyota averaged around 114,000 annual sales between 2005 and 2023.

In contrast, the top-selling Ford F-Series range – which admittedly includes heavier-duty Super Duty models – averaged around 730,000 annual sales during the same period.

If the Tundra is a distant runner-up, however, it avoided the wooden spoon status that plagued another Japanese attempt at an F-Series rival – the Nissan Titan.

Offered for two generations before being axed in 2023, the Titan – like the Tundra – featured similar dimensions to the F-150 as well as V8 power and even heavy-duty XD versions with a Cummins turbo-diesel V8.

Despite appearing to match its American-branded rivals on paper, the Tennessee-built Titan averaged around 33,000 annual sales between 2005 and 2023.

Neither Hyundai nor Kia have ever tackled this segment, nor have any Japanese brands bar Toyota and Nissan.