Interior

Deeply impressive quality and craftsmanship

The interior of each member of the Kia cee’d family has been designed and developed to the highest standards to fully demonstrate the brand’s growing ‘power to surprise’ and to produce cars which are perfectly in tune with European consumers’ tastes and needs.

Now, eight months after the cee’d 5-door went on sale, Kia’s senior executives and its many dealers know that when customers first step into a cee’d they are going to be deeply impressed by its style, execution, quality, materials, fit and finish.

“There will be several unique aspects to the experience of sitting in the three-door pro_cee’d,” enthuses David Labrosse, Manager Product Planning, Kia R&D Centre, Russelsheim. “The shallower windscreen, lower roof lining and wider doors with their slimmer glass house will all create a very special ambience inside this cee’d.”

“There will also be numerous features that are carried over from the cee’d family, because they have been proven to work so successfully. pro_cee’d will present customers with closely matched materials, soft-touch surfaces and high quality fabrics, made in Europe, to suit local tastes.”

“The pro_cee’d will give consumers multiple choices and enable them to create their own interiors, their own atmosphere and achieve a degree of personalization that is not often possible in the C-segment,” concludes Labrosse.

So the successful cee’d five-door interior design that many of that model’s features and attributes are carried-over to the pro_cee’d. Key differences are the lower roofline, larger front doors and redesigned rear seat.

The lower roofline inevitably reduces headroom, but pro_cee’d still offers customers class-competitive interior space, with front headroom of 990 mm and 940 mm of rear headroom. Thanks to the long wheelbase (2650 mm) and generous dimensions from the foot pedals to the rear seat hip-point, interior space in the pro_cee’d will accommodate four large adults, or a family of five, in real comfort.

The new pro_cee’d three-door model offers the following interior space,

The larger pro_cee’d front door hinges feature three ‘detentes’ (including two intermediate steps at 25 and 50 degrees) – the last position an extra-wide 70 degrees so that the greater angle, combined with the 245 mm larger door length (1340 mm long compared to 1095 mm long on the 5-door) ensures good access to the rear seats.

This access is aided by new front seats with a handle on top of the backrest which can be used to tilt the backrest forwards and slide the seat forwards in one smooth operation. Both front seats are fitted with a ‘memory’ mechanism so that they can be returned to their original position after passengers have boarded or exited the pro_cee’d.

These multi-adjustable front seats have wide cushions and backrests to offer superior support with generous proportions to accommodate drivers and passengers of all shapes and sizes. Adjustable lumbar support is available on both driver and passenger seats.

To boost practicality in the three-door pro_cee’d, Kia’s designers re-styled the rear seat cushion, which is now fixed, and re-engineered the 60/40 split backrest so that it is easy to release and simply folds down onto the cushion with no need to remove the headrestraints. The resulting load floor extension is step-less, but not completely flat, however the car does offer excellent luggage capacity for this class of vehicle – a total of 340 litres with the rear seats upright and 1210 litres with them folded.

Like those found in the cee’d 5-door, the pro_cee’d retains the immensely practical under-floor storage trays in the load area.

Cool styling and numerous choices

The clean, modern, sporty and elegant design theme that characterises the exterior of Kia pro_cee’d is replicated throughout the interior.

The pro_cee’d will present customers with the opportunity to choose between three trim/equipment levels, four interior concepts, four centre stack styles and seven different fabrics – depending on model – just like other cee’d models.

The four interior concepts are Basic, Rainbow (in Blue or Blush), Classic and Sporty. The centre stack can be finished in Black, Silver, Blue or Blush. The interior trim choices include: five fabrics – Grey, Blue, Blush, Classic, Sporty and two leathers, Grey and Black.

Driver-focused cockpit and controls

The pro_cee’d driver will enjoy the feeling of a ‘compact and sporty’ cockpit with its shallower windscreen, thick-rimmed, three-spoke steering wheel, sporty three-dial instrument cluster beneath a tightly curved cowling and centre stack angled towards the driver.

All the controls are ergonomically designed to place them within easy reach of the driver’s hands and the overall layout has true elegance.

The instrument cluster has a ‘high-tech’ appearance, with the large central speedometer flanked by a rev-counter (to the left) and water temperature and fuel gauges to the right. The dial graphics are detailed, precise and clear, while the ‘high-tech’ look is enhanced by the use of red-orange illumination for the dials, audio equipment and switch gear.

‘Floating’ centre stack feature

The stylish centre stack is a key visual feature of the interior design and can be ordered with one of five different finishes. Designed so that it appears to ‘float’ beside the driver, it features a tailor-made RDS audio system, and unusually it is flanked by four large air vents – rather than the more commonly-found two.

The centre stack sweeps down to meet the floor console which houses an oddments tray (with USB, AUX and iPod connections on EX and TX trims), gear selector and hand-brake lever, twin cup-holders and large-capacity storage box.