Can we all agree that Kia had better quit making awesome-looking concept cars unless it plans on building them? Good, because in the past few years we’ve seen the amazingly gorgeous GT, Track’ster hot hatch, and even the funky Provo hybrid—hit show stands to raucous fanfare before being hustled away, perhaps to some secret bunker near the demilitarized zone at Korea’s 38th parallel. So far, the most tangible link between any of those cars and a real Kia materialized in the form of the 2014 Soul, which wears some styling cues shared with the Track’ster. But where’s that design exercise’s turbo four? It’s three-door body style? Exactly.

View Photos MARC URBANO, THE MANUFACTURER

Now along comes another stunning show car from the Korean brand, one that bellows loud and clear the strong message that Kia is no longer up and coming, but fully and completely arrived and ready to take on the fun-to-drive crowd. Forget this newest concept car’s slightly silly name—GT4 Stinger—and focus on the key details: It’s a compact, rear-drive 2+2 coupe designed around simplicity, lightness, and driving fun. And did we mention it’s got a turbo four and a proper six-speed manual?

BRZing New Trails For Kia

Naturally, by now your mind has drifted to the GT4 Stinger’s obvious competitors, the Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S twins. Much like those cars, the Kia features tidy dimensions and a light curb weight, claimed here to be around 2800 pounds. Dimensionally, the Stinger casts a slightly larger shadow than the Scibaru siblings, with a 1.9-inch-longer wheelbase, an extra three inches of length, and a substantial 4.5 more inches of width. Its roof also is 1.4 inches closer to the ground than the BRZ’s and FR-S’s.

The Kia further sets itself apart from the Japanese twins with its snappy styling, conceived in the automaker’s California design studio (which also turned out the slick Track’ster concept). Its clean lines and classy detailing give it a far more grown-up look than the boy-racer BRZ and FR-S, and we dig the Kia’s more useful rear hatch. The profile has a lot of Audi Quattro in it, although that C-pillar isn’t doing blind-spot visibility any favors. Kia kept the hood as low as possible—attractive and bold in today’s pedestrian-impact-standards-driven world—necessitating elegant fender peaks to clear the concept’s huge staggered-width 20-inch center-lock aluminum and carbon-fiber wheels. The brand’s signature grille is set low in the front fascia, flanked by a pair of vertical LED headlights with integrated brake-cooling ducts.

Moving to the car’s hindquarters, there is a blacked-out panel, reminiscent of the latest Soul hatchback’s tailgate treatment, which flows into the dark-tinted backlight. A pair of C-shaped taillights glow from behind the black-out area, and the simple bumper houses two big, round exhaust outlets. Perhaps the Stinger’s most-ambitious design details are its partially see-through A-pillars. From the inside, a series of drilled-out voids in the pillar allow for a nearly 270-degree front view and contribute to a lighter structure, at least according to Kia. From the outside, the blacked-out pillars give the windshield a wraparound look, which the automaker says looks like “wraparound sunglasses.” Since that sort of eyewear hasn’t been cool for a long time, we’ll simply override that statement with our own: Wraparound windshields look good, ’80s sunwear be damned.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io