Statement of intent
Oct 2, 2025
Words: Cameron Officer
Photography: Ryan Allen
Uphill battle? Here’s the truck for it. When it comes to taking on the established heavyweights of New Zealand’s busy light commercial ute market, Kia has plenty to play for. And it’s putting its best all-terrain tyre forward with the new Tasman.
First ute, yes. But Kia’s new Tasman is by no means the manufacturer’s first offroad focused vehicle. Turns out they’ve been making Humvee-style military machines for the Republic of Korea’s defence forces since 1973, and exporting them to over 25 countries, from the Middle East to the Americas and many points in between.
So, offroad nous might be one of two boxes ticked by Kia then. The second? An ever-increasing ability to make genuinely interesting, genuinely aspirational vehicles for mere civilians too.
Because sitting in the Kia Tasman – whether it be the entry-level Tasman TX or the topflight Tasman X-Pro – is a supremely comfortable experience regardless of the road surface, or lack thereof, under the wheels.
I realise starting any feature on a new ute inside the cabin might seem a bit back-to-front, but it’s worth mentioning before we get to the tough stuff underneath. The same mix of quality materials and high tech features you’d anticipate from any modern Kia, from a Niro to a Sorento, is present and correct here.
The high-resolution instrument cluster and adjoining infotainment screens stretch almost 25-inches across the dash and centre console. The front and rear seats (whether cloth or, as in the top two models, leather) are comfortable and supportive. Those rear seats are no afterthought either, with the rear bench in all grades offering plenty of room and, in the X-Line and X-Pro versions, sliding and reclining functionality. Lift up the base squabs and there’s a deep hidden cubby for stuff you don’t want on show.
There’s plenty of storage options up front too, with the centre console featuring a good mix of digital usability and chunky, tactile switchgear, reflecting the nature of the beast.
The Tasman is a work truck through and through, but with the DNA of a refined SUV.
Inside at least. Outside? Yes, let’s get down to business.
We won’t skirt around it: aspects of the ute’s exterior design have raised eyebrows. But perhaps that’s the point. Have you seen a Kia EV6 or EV9? This isn’t a company that shy’s away from bold styling. In a cookie cutter world, it’s a refreshing stance, and the Tasman is no exception.
In the metal, the Tasman is Tonka Truck-tastic. I’m a big fan of the slab-sided nature of the thing: it has road presence in spades and, in that ‘tan beige’ body colour especially, more than a hint of battle-ready Operation Desert Storm about it. Perhaps Kia’s civilian and military wings aren’t that far removed from one another after all.
Kia New Zealand is launching the new model with an all-wellside tray line-up (six grades, with five being 4x4s), but single- and double-cab chassis versions will be available in 2026. The business end of each wellside Tasman is capacious, with tray lengths of between 1,512mm and 1,573mm combined with widths of between 1,157mm and 1,600mm. Payloads of around 1,027kg can be expected and every grade offers 3.5-tonne braked towing capability.
The 4x4 Tasmans’ are true off-roaders, with selectable four-wheel drive gearing including low range and recorded wading depths of up to 800mm, which is lineball with the country’s top selling utes.
All encouraging stuff on paper, but what about in practice?
During pre-production testing, Kia took Tasman prototypes on shakedown challenges through some of the world’s most extreme environments, such as the desert landscapes of the UAE, and the backwoods of California and Australia. Deep water wading trials were performed at the carmaker’s Autoland test facility in Gwangju, South Korea, where they put those aforementioned military vehicles through their paces.
Kiwi media got to try out the results of all that pre-prod punishment up in the Tararua foothills, north of Wellington. Kia New Zealand wasn’t mucking around either, turning a large and largely precipitous section of a mountain bike park into a dedicated four-wheel drive track which apparently took 600-man hours to build. The official offroad instructors (there to manage motoring journalists with determined looks in their eye) reckon the track was one of the best, and most challenging, they’d come across in many years.
Plenty of steep, muddy grades, tight and twisty turns through narrow alleyways of gnarly paint-threatening tree branches, rollercoaster humps and hollows designed to show off wheel articulation, and the circuit’s pièce de resistance: a deep mud bath of a water trough accessed by a short but steep reach-for-the-grab-handle descent.
The Tasmans’ on offer acquitted themselves superbly, showcasing grip, ground clearance and gutsy mud-plugging power from the 2.2-litre four-cylinder turbo diesel (154kW/440Nm) fitted across the range. It’s also worth noting every truck available to drive at the media day wore standard road tyres.
The ute has plenty of tech to help navigate the bits where the tarmac ends too, such as a trick Ground View camera system that lets the driver see ‘through’ the nose of the vehicle to what’s ahead of and between the front wheels (Tasman X-Pro only), and an impressive next-gen take on Downhill Descent Control, which not only manages individual wheel braking and speed down steep grades, but also gently pulls the truck up slopes as well. Your right foot will never have felt so relaxed offroad. The range header X-Pro also gets an electromechanical diff lock.
It seems that with every passing season, another new light commercial ute gets added to the national fleet. But that speaks to what a large proportion of Kiwis want from their transport for both workdays and weekends.
With the Tasman, Kia has entered new territory in a typically confident manner. It’s a ute range that hits the ground running, offering bold styling, beast-mode abilities, bells and whistles. Civilians take note.