Hyundai‘s closest competitor isn’t Ford or Toyota. Right now, it’s its own corporate sibling. While the Kia Tasman, the Korean giant’s first serious stab at the body-on-frame pickup segment, is still finding its footing in a market that doesn’t hand out favors easily, Hyundai has decided that watching from the sidelines isn’t really its style. The brand has already teased a rugged, ladder-frame pickup of its own, and predictably, it was shown under enough camouflage to make a military vehicle blush.
What little the silhouette revealed was enough to sketch a profile. A crew-cab layout, a nearly vertical front fascia, oversized wheels. The rest of the design cues are expected to borrow liberally from the Boulder SUV concept, which itself wasn’t exactly shy about Hyundai’s intentions in the off-road space.
Enter the render artists at Kolesa, who decided that waiting for an official reveal is overrated. Their digital interpretation leans on the Tasman’s bones. Same door shapes, same roofline, same general proportions. The Hyundai-specific touches include a split-headlight signature, some LED detailing through the grille, a revised hood wearing the brand’s logo front and center, and a posterior end with updated taillights and a tailgate that spells out H-Y-U-N-D-A-I in full. The wheel arches, notably, are more restrained than the Kia’s, a small mercy for those who find flared fenders a bit theatrical.
On the powertrain front, the working hypothesis points to hybrid setups and possibly range-extender configurations. No name, no confirmed specs, no official timeline beyond a presumed North American arrival before 2030.
Whether the production version will bear any resemblance to these renderings is, generously speaking, uncertain. Render culture and automotive reality tend to diverge sharply the moment an actual engineering team gets involved. But as exercises in structured speculation go, this one raises a legitimate question: if Hyundai showed up to the pickup party with something like this, would it be enough to pull buyers away from trucks with decades of loyalty baked in?
