Kia has revealed the latest Picanto that doesn't have as many doors as the other Picanto. Commentators are controversially referring to it as the three-door Picanto, or sometimes, in a nice twist, the Picanto three-door.
In fact, it's the first three-door Kia Picanto since the model was launched in 2004, although it comes very shortly after the launch of the second-generation car.
Kia says that "if the five-door Picanto is 'the small car, grown-up', then the three-door is the same but with a twinkle in its eye." After studying the photographs for some time, we've concluded that this twinkle is hypothetical; we can't find an eye either.
On sale in September, the three-door range is priced from £7,795. It's the same size as the five-door, although it has a few unique features to distinguish it from the slightly more practical version.
The side sill mouldings are new, the grille is bigger and highlighted in red, and the front bumper has been re-profiled to give the car a lower, wider look. At the back there's a new black plastic insert and chromed twin pipes. New alloy designs, too.
There are no physical changes inside (aside from the sliding front seats) but different colour and trim schemes separate three- from five-door.
The base model gets a three-cylinder 1.0-litre petrol engine with 68bhp, and there's a 1.25-litre with 84bhp and 60.1mpg. The EcoDynamics version of that unit returns 65.7mpg, though bafflingly that's not the cleanest version - the 1.0-litre is.
Mark Nichol - 15 Aug 2011