Kia today took the wraps off the updated K9 flagship luxury sedan in Korea. If it looks familiar, and we don’t mean those very Volvo ‘Thor’-like headlamp signatures, that’s because the K9 is the facelift of the car we’ve come to know as the K900 flagship luxury sedan in the USA and Canada where it has been dropped due to poor sales.
First introduced in 2018, the Korean carmakers says it designed the updated K9 to be more “luxurious” and “sophisticated” than the outgoing model.
Read More: Kia Is Dropping The Cadenza And K900 In The United States
That translates into a new and wider grille, with V-shaped chrome inserts, slim headlights, and a large bumper up front. Kia is also using a reworked character line to make the car look larger, 19-inch wheels to make it look more luxurious, and a new taillight line that runs along the width of the rear that’s supposed to portray its tech prowess, but that’s marketing talk.
Although the new look changes things up for the model, it’s a much more restrained update than what the Kia K8 got, for instance.
Unfortunately, the vehicle’s interior has not been revealed yet. With the exterior’s premium update, though, we would anticipate that the interior will get finer materials, plush seats, and perhaps an update to the infotainment system.
Similarly, Kia has not yet announced detailed specs for the updated car’s powertrain. The outgoing model, though, offers both rear- and all-wheel-drive configurations as well as a variety of engines. The range tops out with a 5.0-liter V8 that makes 419 hp. A selection of V6s, meanwhile, make between 250 hp and 311 hp.
See Also: New Kia K8 (Cadenza) Debuts, Gets Up To 295 HP 3.5-Liter V6 And Offers AWD
Until recently, the K9 was offered in the US with the V8 engine and called the K900. In January, the brand announced that it would be dropping the model along with the Cadenza (now known as the K8) in North America. Poor sales and the importance of crossovers were blamed for the sedans’ demise.
Asked if it would consider bringing the updated K9 stateside, a Kia North America representative told us that “There are currently no plans to offer the recently announced K9 in the US market,” while we got the same response from a spokesperson in Canada.