New Kia Stinger revealed as the Stinger GT in Detroit as Kia go ‘performance’ (+ video)

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The Kia Stinger arrives at the Detroit Motor Show in GT guise as Kia deliver a car to strike at the German (and Jaguar) premium performance saloons.

Having made its mark as a maker of cars which stand toe to toe with the best of the mainstream – the Sportage being a good example – Kia is now taking aim at premium sports saloons like the BMW 3 Series and Jaguar XE with this, the Kia Stinger, revealed as the Stinger GT in Detroit.

The Stinger is the fruit of poaching Albert Biermann from BMW’s M Division in 2014, tasked with bringing a production version of the Kia GT Concept to life and in to production, the Stinger GT looks rather appealing.

Power in the GT comes from a 360bhp twin turbo petrol V6 with power going to the back wheels through an eight-speed auto ‘box which, as we know, yields a 0-62mph around 5.0 seconds.

Logically, the Stinger is aimed at cars like the BMW 3 Series (if not quite the M3), although it’s actually a chunk bigger, sitting between the 3-Series and 5-Series in size thanks to its tweaked Genesis underpinnings.

The Stinger’s suspension is by way of MacPherson struts at the front and a multi-link rear, with adaptive dampers (an option, at least) and driving modes which act on suspension, steering and gearbox.

Just as Alfa Romeo did with the Giulia Quadrifoglio, it’s rolled out its Stinger GT performance range-topper first, but there’s a four-cylinder Stinger with 250bhp on the way too, and a diesel and hybrid Stinger seem a likely addition before too long.

The Kia STinger GT will arrive later in 2017, and the range-topper V6 Stinger GT is tipped to cost as much as £40k, almost exactly the same as the BMW 340i.

Kia Stinger GT Video