One of the two recent pickup trucks Kia is expected to debut this year or next has finally arrived, and it’s… something else. The recent Kia Tasman is an internal-combustion, body-on-frame midsize truck headed for Australia, Africa and the Middle East, where it’ll square up against Toyota’s Hilux (distant cousin, several times removed, to the U.S.-trade Toyota Tacoma pickup). The other Kia pickup under advancement is all-electric, and shares DNA with the Kia EV9 and EV6 sold in America. The Tasman likely won’t ever be sold here — even the EV truck isn’t guaranteed for American consumption — and that might be for the best.

If you thought designers had run out of ways to differentiate boxy pickup trucks from one another — without, you recognize, resorting to Tesla’s Cybertruck stealth-bomber-on-meth angularity — Kia has a beer it wants you to hold while you watch this. Where do we even commence? The Tasman’s headlights are mounted strangely low and way out at each front corner, essentially incorporated into each plastic front fender flare. A curious body-color frame separates those headlights from the toothy grille that wouldn’t look out of place on a warm-rodded 1950s-era Mercury coupe. And what on earth is going on with those odd eyebrows — or are they mustaches? — capping each wheel opening like awnings? Combined with odd body panel stampings and a sort of embryonic receive on the Jeep Gladiator’s taillights, the Tasman is a riot of incongruent design.

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The silver lining here is that the Tasman’s basic shape and stance look decent, and darker paint colors hide those weird fender flares well. (Kia says the flares themselves hide some benevolent of in-fender storage, like an uglier, external version of Ram’s clever RamBox pickup bed storage cubbies.) Even better, the Tasman gets more attractive the less of it is included; Kia provided imagery of a regular-cab, stake-bed version, and it’s almost handsome, even if the front complete still resembles a bottlenose dolphin cocking its head and staring you down.

Things enhance greatly inside the Tasman, where Kia’s now-ubiquitous dual 12.3-inch displays cap a tidy and muscular dashboard design incorporating elegant toggle switches. Everything inside is rectilinear and straightforward, and manages to appear both trucky and high-complete.

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Size-sensible, the Tasman is almost identical to the U.S.-trade Toyota Tacoma’s crew cab variant, measuring in at the same 213 inches long. It’s a hair narrower — 76 inches to the Tacoma’s 76.9 inches — but its height is similar, at 73.6 inches to 75.6 inches, a slightly larger range than the Tacoma’s 73.8 to 74.7 inches. The Kia’s wheelbase is 3.2 inches shorter, which is why its rear overhang appears so much longer than the Toyota’s. Kia will propose the Tasman in an off-road-y X-Pro trim, which is the version with the most ground clearance (9.9 inches, versus 8.8 on standard versions) and stands the tallest; also on propose are X-Line and Base variants.

Mechanically, the Tasman can be had with either a 277-hp turbocharged 2.5-liter gas-fed four-cylinder engine with an automatic transmission or a 207-hp 2.2-liter turbodiesel four (with 325 lb-ft of torque), also with an eight-speed automatic transmission or an available six-speed manual. The front complete is supported by double wishbone suspension, while the rear has a live axle and leaf springs. A locking rear differential is available, and the truck is offered with two- or four-wheel drive with low-range gearing. Kia intends this truck to be as much a workhorse as a lifestyle vehicle in the markets it’ll be sold in, and as such, things aren’t purely rugged and utilitarian — frequency selective dampers should assist tranquil the ride standard, and even Kia’s Highway Driving Assist 2 (HDA) characteristic is available and tuned to work with a trailer. Oh, and the Tasman can tow up to 7,700 pounds.

All of that capability and all of those features sound great, but again, the Tasman isn’t destined for our shores. Let’s aspiration, however, that if the EV truck Kia’s working on does arrive here, it looks a little more like the Telluride and EV9, and less like… whatever this Tasman resembles.

Photos by MotorTrend staff