What's the news?
We've had some infuriating teasers on it in the build up to the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) but now Kia has fully opened up (literally) on the Telluride concept, by flinging its opposing-opening doors wide to show us the inside and out of this potential seven-seat SUV.
Exterior
Umm... look, we're big fans of Kia, right, we like the company's products and so on... but the Telluride is not a good-looking thing. Designed to showcase what a full luxury SUV - which would sit above the current range-topping Sorento in Kia's line-up - might look like, the answer seems to be 'a bit ugly'. The show car is finished in Dark Pyrite Green and is a colossal machine: at 1,801mm tall, 2,009mm wide and 5,001mm long, it's 112-, 119- and 241mm larger in every respect than the Sorento.
It's not the physical size which is so much the problem, though, more the car's very blocky and American appearance. Which is no surprise, as it was penned at Kia's design centre in California. The tiger-nose grille of the brand is present and correct, and some massive 22-inch five-spoke alloys are proper show car stuff. But its quad-LED headlamps look a bit too small in the bluff, flared wings, while the glasshouse is too squared-off and clunky. The rear-end is quite appealing, with those rear lamp clusters almost like the boomerang efforts of the Maserati 3200GT... which, er... which were dropped after American customers complained about them. Oh.
Interior
You can't fail to have noticed the Telluride's front doors open conventionally, while the rears are 'suicide' efforts hinged at the opposite end of the car, meaning all four doors swing open 90 degrees to allow full access to an interior that's dominated by a quartet of black leather captain's chairs, with the third row folded away in the rear. Should anything like the Telluride ever make production, these seats are the first things that'll be dropped.
What's most intriguing is that each seat is embedded with Smart Sensors to capture a passenger's health information. These vital signs can then be displayed on the interior door panel screens, which then synchronise with a 'Light Emitted Rejuvenation (LER) system'. This LER can display a pattern of therapeutic light that treats jetlag, of all things, supposedly boosting the passengers' energy levels. It's like a health spa on wheels.
Finally, Swipe Command allows second-row passengers to use gestures to control their desired media; this would be a Very Bad Idea if the Telluride ever made production, as kids frequently sit in the second row of big, seven-seat SUVs and we can only imagine the mischief they'd get up to with this feature. But it's a nice touch for a US show star.
Mechanicals
Sketchy stuff here from Kia, as the company doesn't go into a huge amount of detail. The Telluride is, as expected in this day and age, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), mating a 270hp 3.5-litre V6 petrol engine to a 130hp electric motor - making for a neat 400hp total output. Power goes to all four wheels and the Korean firm claims a motorway consumption figure of (deep breath, now)... 36mpg (7.8 litres/100km).
Anything else?
Kia says it has no plans to put the Telluride as it is into production, but does go on to explain that it has a 'history of delivering production vehicles that bear strong resemblance to preceding concepts', adding this 'large SUV is anything but a utopian fantasy'. So, over to Tom Kearns, Kia's chief designer in the US, who says: "The Kia Telluride makes an aesthetic statement for the Kia brand as a bold, all-new luxury SUV with an abundance of advanced technology, focusing particular attention on the experience and comfort of second-row occupants. Longer, wider and taller than the recently redesigned Sorento, Telluride allows us to envision what a full-size seven-passenger SUV from Kia could look like."