Styling & Design

Longer, lower, bolder look for new pro_cee’d

“We wanted to make pro_cee’d as ‘sporty’ as a cee’d could possibly be, while still remaining a member of our cee’d family,” explains Gregory Guillaume, Chief Designer Kia Motors Europe. “We are proud that the appearance of the production car remains so close to the concept we showed at the Paris Motor Show last year and only the frameless doors have been dropped.

The three-door, Kia pro_cee’d is such a comprehensive re-working of the cee’d design theme that only the bonnet and the front wing panels are carried over from the five-door. All other exterior panels are new and exclusive to this model. However, like its family siblings, pro_cee’d has a similar ‘tough not rough’ appearance, combining strongly solid forms with sensitively flowing lines, jewel-like detailing and a broad stance.

“With the pro_cee’d production car we have communicated sportiness mostly through the car’s exterior design,” continues Guillaume. “At the front, we have extended the nose by 10 mm and pulled down the mass by introducing a shallower grille, new-style headlamps, a wider, lower bumper with a prominent lip spoiler, a deeper central air intake that is wider at the bottom than the top and larger fog lights set into elliptical depressions.

“The profile makes pro_cee’d truly distinctive. While the windscreen angle is unchanged, the screen is much shallower and the vehicle height is reduced by 30 mm. The cant rail above the door and side window is deeper. The doors, which are 245 mm longer than the pro_cee’d’s 5-door cousin, have a unique design that highlights the sporty character of this model. The beltline rises much more steeply towards the rear. To ‘sit’ the car even more securely on the road, the blade-shaped swage line has a sharper section and both the top and bottom edges rise at the rear, blending into the wheel arch.

“The side window, C-Pillar and tailgate spoiler are of course all new and although the rear screen is steeply raked, rear headroom remains good and the trunk capacity is unchanged. The rear wing panels are pulled in a little (compared with the 5-door) so the rear wheel arches appear to protrude further from the main body – although the overall width is unchanged,” comments Guillaume.
“At the rear, the side beltline tracks the outside edge of the all-new jewel-like rear lamp cluster and flows seamlessly into and around the rear bumper which is extended by 5 mm. This flow is echoed by a crisp crease line between the metal edge of the tailgate and the rear screen. This subtle stress line wraps around the inside edge of the light clusters, seeming to push them outwards, making the car look wider. Flow lines are also created by the rear wheel arch and rear bumper with corner ridges that pick-up on the swage lines. Unlike other cee’d models, the exhaust tailpipe on the pro_cee’d is boldly displayed,” concludes Guillaume.

Under the guidance of Guillaume, pro_cee’d was styled by a dedicated multinational Kia design team in Germany, assisted by a design team in Korea. Like other members of the family, the third cee’d model is exclusively tailored to meet the requirements of the European C-segment and the tastes of European consumers.

World-class wind tunnel hones pro_cee’d aerodynamics

The final look of the production pro_cee’d was developed from European designs in Kia’s world-class full-size aero-acoustic wind tunnel at the Namyang R&D Centre in Korea. The pro_cee’d has a smooth exterior, with elegant detailing and no unnecessary features, which results in significantly improved aerodynamics.

The 4250 mm long three-door hatchback, which is 15 mm longer than the five-door, with 10 mm greater overhang (875 mm) at the front and 5 mm (725 mm) at the rear, has highly competitive drag and lift coefficients. Its aerodynamic drag figure is Cd 0.33 (same as the cee’d 5-door) – bettering Golf and Focus, while its lift coefficient figure is a class-best result. A low lift coefficient enhances vehicle stability at high speeds.

High-tech, lower-weight body structure

Beneath its stylish exterior, Kia’s new pro_cee’d benefits from a bodyshell that has been engineered to achieve exceptionally high torsional (twisting) stiffness, which delivers a host of benefits in terms of handling, ride quality, durability, refinement and safety.

The all-new bodyshell that Kia has engineered for the pro_cee’d uses a high percentage of high tensile-strength steel (67%) for structurally critical components (to save weight and to increase torsional stiffness), while more than 87% of the bodyshell is made from anti-corrosion steel.

Model-for-model, the new pro_cee’d weighs a significant 84 kg (maximum) less than the equivalent five-door version.

Finite element analysis was performed to conduct simulated crash testing and to arrive at the optimal structural design. Kia’s engineers created a final pro_cee’d bodyshell that surpasses its design goals in terms of resistance to both twisting forces (torsional rigidity) and longitudinal bending forces (flexural rigidity).

To enhance the bodyshell’s ability to resist corrosion, every cee’d is subjected to a new Rotation Dipping Painting method which takes each bodyshell and rotates it through a forward somersault while immersed in the tank, ensuring the optimum coating thickness on every surface, throughout the entire shell.