OURAY, Colo. — The Telluride has carved profitable new paths for Kia because the crossover was launched in 2019.
The big ute attracts a gradual wave of latest, youthful and extra prosperous consumers to the model. Common transaction costs have hovered above sticker because it went on sale.
It was the fifth-bestselling massive crossover within the U.S. final 12 months behind the Toyota Highlander, Ford Explorer, Chevrolet Traverse and Volkswagen Atlas; it moved forward of the Traverse within the first half of this 12 months to take the No. 3 spot. The Telluride ranked second amongst automobiles within the three-row crossover section in J.D. Energy’s newest survey of preliminary high quality, behind the Highlander and forward of the GMC Acadia, after putting first in 2021.
And it persistently scores among the many most satisfying and interesting crossovers in its section, once more rated by house owners, primarily based on a separate J.D. Energy survey.
However it’s nonetheless lacking some true off-road chops that cater to households and outside fans. So Kia is including two new trim packages as a part of a 2023 replace.
The Telluride X-Line and X-Professional fashions — each with all-wheel drive — achieve 0.4 inch of floor clearance for a complete of 8.4 inches. The X-Line provides a brand new Tow mode, beefier roof rails, a redesigned grille and distinctive 20-inch wheels. The X-Professional takes that package deal and provides a 110-volt outlet within the cargo space, swaps the 20-inch wheels for 18-inch wheels with all-terrain tires, and will get an elevated tow score of 5,500 kilos, up from 5,000.
And hill-descent management is a brand new addition and commonplace on all Telluride trims, whether or not outfitted with front-wheel drive or awd.
Kia hasn’t offered specifics on strategy and departure angles primarily based on the updates however claims they’re improved over the 2022 Telluride’s 17-degree strategy angle and a 20.9-degree departure angle. For comparability, real off-roaders such because the Jeep Wrangler boast a greater than 40-degree strategy angle and greater than 35-degree departure angle.
On the redesigned Kia Sportage, the brand new X-Professional accounts for greater than 20 p.c of mannequin combine, nicely forward of Kia’s 10 p.c goal, in response to Russell Wagner, head of promoting for Kia America.
Wagner additionally mentioned Kia goals to spice up output of the 2023 Telluride about 20 p.c because it and different automakers work by means of provide bottlenecks.
The Telluride identify — pronounced with a brief string of robust consonants, coincidentally, like Tahoe, Tundra, Bronco, Cherokee, Pilot, Yukon, Sequoia and Tundra — conjures up mighty and robust functionality. However Kia remains to be largely a challenger model in a section the place Jeep, Subaru and others have lengthy forded.
Enter Madison Avenue.
In late July, artistic company David & Goliath, a unit of Innocean, assembled a solid of digicam operators, administrators and three 2023 Telluride X-Professionals and trekked up the facet of a peak within the Rocky Mountains that separates the Colorado cities of Ouray and Telluride. The mission: Display the Telluride’s new fortitude for industrial audiences in what Wagner calls “a fantastic majestic setting.”
The setting was half alpine meadow, half finish of the Earth, half crater, half mountain stream, with a number of free and stuck rock, massive and small, and the occasional tumbleweed.
Kia invited a small group of journalists to the summit to expertise a few of the first of two days of taking pictures. It was the primary time the crossover had ever been filmed in or close to Telluride, a onetime mining outpost the place Butch Cassidy robbed his first financial institution, in 1889. Tellurium minerals have been as soon as mined all through the area, and the streets of the country whistle-stop city are nonetheless lined with gold rush cabins.
Whereas Aspen, Colo., is the close to unique enclave of Saudi sheikhs, Lamborghinis and Porsches, there may be nonetheless a slice of Telluride that’s authentically Western and naked, uncooked frontier — Ralph Lauren’s close by working ranch and a few five-star resorts apart.
The path up and down noticed waves of Jeep Wranglers, utility terrain automobiles and vacationers in open-air mountain buggies. There wasn’t a Land Rover Defender or perhaps a new Ford Bronco noticed.
It takes a small military to provide a 30-second industrial: producers, digicam operators, stunt drivers, prop handlers, administrators, a increase digicam operator and driver, even two detailers to maintain the three Tellurides spotless. Storyboards, cloud machines, a raft of digicam lenses, coolers, truck-mounted increase cameras, sound specialists — all of it made it up the mountain.
The industrial is scheduled to debut throughout the Emmy Awards telecast scheduled for Sept. 12 on NBC.
Wagner and different Kia officers trace solely that the advert will showcase the newest Telluride’s capability to achieve new heights, elevations or limits.
Mom Nature even rewrote the script. Because the group left the shoot and continued as much as Imogene Go, elevation 13,114 toes, a storm blew in and dropped waves of hail and sleet. Visibility on the summit dropped to round 100 toes. Lighting and mudslides pressured the crew again down the mountain to safer terrain.
One story has it that Telluride was named so due to the treacherous paths out and in of the distant city — “To Hell You Journey” — earlier than the appearance of the horseless carriage and later four-wheel drive.
Simply because it navigated the ascent, the 2023 Telluride survived the hail, in response to Ben Purcell, chief artistic officer for David & Goliath. We’ll simply have to attend until subsequent month to depend the excessive clouds and see how the Telluride’s display position went.