By now, it’s very clear that the market has shifted from three-door vehicles to their more practical derivatives. Seat has done it to the Mii and Leon, and now Kia is following a similar path.

The new ProCeed that was unveiled at the 2018 Paris Motor Show was very close to not seeing the light of day. It was initially designed as a sporty-looking three-door hatchback, but then, the Korean brand’s officials looked at the market and thought about killing it.

However, they weren’t ready to end the ProCeed just yet, so they added two extra doors, CarAdvice reports, after speaking to Kia Europe’s chief designer, Gregory Guillaume.

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“We were just about to start the new ProCeed, and the product guys said to us, ‘the ProCeed is dead, we’re not doing another one’. As you can imagine the faces of the guys on the team, because the segment was just disappearing in Europe, three-door hatches were just not there anymore.”

The salvation came after they took the ProCeed back to the drawing board, making it longer and adding two more doors at the back. It was Mr. Guillaume who asked a new sporty product from his designers, and the modern Kia ProCeed was born.

“Just don’t give me a three-door anymore, because they’ll axe that immediately”, Guillaume told the designers. “Out of a moment of crisis, we came up with an interesting answer”, he described the entire situation.

Also Read: Kia Won’t Get A High-Performance Sub-Brand Like Hyundai

Not only the ProCeed is not making a comeback as a three-door hatchback, but Kia isn’t interesting in launching a two-door coupe either – for now at least.

“I don’t know if a performance coupe is something that is [good]. We have the Stinger, which is a four-door coupe. I don’t know if a two-door really makes sense. It may make sense if it were an EV, an emotional electric car”, added Gregory Guillaume.

Based upon the latest generation Ceed, the new Kia ProCeed Shooting Brake will be launched in two grades, called GT-Line and GT. The former will be available with three different engines, including a diesel, and the latter is powered by the same unit as the new Ceed GT.

Sales of the car will commence before the year’s end in Europe, and production will start in November, at the automaker’s factory in Slovakia. The first cars will be delivered in the first quarter of 2019.

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Live image credits: Stefan Baldauf / Guido ten Brink for Carscoops