Surprise: The Facelifted Kia Picanto Looks Quite Mean, Comes With An N/A I4

For its dinky city car, Kia has applied one of those rare facelifts that actually makes a noticeable difference

Car Throttle has a long-standing tradition of poking fun at barely visible facelifts, but we’ll not be doing that today. That’s because the facelifted Kia Picanto looks remarkably different from the outgoing model, and we must say, rather striking too.

It has an angular new face with large headlight clusters, making it look an awful lot like Kia’s giant EV9 electric SUV. Kia calls it a “wide, confident stance”. It’s a similar story at the back, where curves have also made way for straight lines. The new rear clusters are joined by what looks like a full-width light bar, although it looks as though the middle section is merely a lens with no lighting elements behind it. Still, it’s a neat thing to have on a city car.

The changes inside are less noticeable. The overall design hasn’t changed a great deal, although there are a couple of new “nature-inspired” colour packs available – ‘Adventurous Green’ and ‘Rich Brown’. We’d probably go for the latter, because brown interiors are underrated.

All new Picantos get a 4.2-inch digital instrument cluster and an eight-inch touchscreen infotainment setup with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay as standard. Both systems now benefit from over-the-air updates.

Unusually for a new car in 2023, there isn’t a single turbocharged engine in the range. The entry-level, 66bhp 1.0-litre inline-three has been carried over, but the 99bhp turbo version has been left behind. Anyone wanting a little more go will need to go for a naturally aspirated 1.2-litre inline-four. Kia hasn’t listed a power output for this, but we all know that inline fours with modest outputs can be great fun to thrash around in, so we’re rather looking forward to trying that one out.

We don’t have acceleration figures for the two engines, but the triple is likely to dispatch the benchmark 0-62mph sprint in the same time as the old one – a leisurely 13.8 seconds. Fuel economy figures aren’t known either, but we’d anticipate these as being comfortably over 50mpg. Each, Kia says, has been enhanced with better exhaust gas recirculation, tweaked intake valve timing and improved combustion chamber cooling.

The range is disarmingly simple, with buyers only given the choice of the Picanto ‘baseline’ with cloth seats and 14-inch wheels, or the GT-Line, with 16-inch rims, artificial leather and sportier bits of exterior trim.

There’s no word on pricing, but the starting point might well be over £15,000.

Now read: The Rise Of The Inline-Three Is Spoiling The Fun Of Underpowered Cars

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