Kia EV6 GT first drive: Short Ranger, more speed

The EV6 GT is still a heavy car, and its 2,185kg curb weight can be felt through corners when driven fast. If it’s truly released, we doubt the physics will soon overwhelm the efforts of Kia’s engineers. Obviously, and despite its massive power, this is not a car designed for track use. Kia says as much in its own words, when the GT was tested on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, “It’s built specifically for road use.”

So, you probably don’t need to know that the “secret” drift mode turns off the front engine, tells the track control to take a few minutes, and requires you to slide the Kia into a fast drive. Fun for a couple of minutes on private land, but somewhat pointless for the other 99.9 percent of the time.

Inside, the GT shares a very similar cabin to the regular EV6 with the GT-Line options package. Like any other EV, it’s comfortable and quiet at low speeds. However, the wind noise generated by the wing mirrors (a case of hangover from the standard EV6) is louder than we’d like from a car costing over £60,000.

The cabin is attractive and the GT-exclusive semibucket seats offer extra support, but aren’t as comfortable as the softer, squishier seats fitted to the regular car.

The dual 12.2-inch curved dashboard displays are the same as the standard EV6, and so are the touchscreen controls below, which display media and climate icons at the same time. Kia has tried to minimize clutter here, but in doing so has a system that doesn’t show any climate control unless you show it with a touch button to switch from infotainment and navigation to heat. Then instead of leaving the heating and cooling controls, after a few seconds it goes back to the previous one.

Kia’s wireless phone charger is sleeker and more reliable than some we’ve seen, but the lack of wireless Apple CarPlay, a significant shortcoming in the existing vanilla EV6, is still disappointing. Practicality is on a par with its siblings, with the same cabin and storage space as the standard twin-engine variant, which means just 20 liters of storage under the hood.

Kia says it’s set to produce a grand tourer reminiscent of the comfortable, big-engined cars of the 1970s. The EV6 GT certainly has plenty of performance, and the suspension and differential changes show the company has made a real effort to improve dynamics and straight-line driving. But the 262-mile range doesn’t live up to the GT’s billing.

And while super-fast charging with the car’s 800-volt technology goes some way to easing distance anxiety, Kia has instead opted for a more long-legged mix of speed and space, with straightforward performance.