Frankfurt, Germany - Kia's announcement that the production version of the fourth-generation Optima sedan will premiere at the New York motor show was accompanied by these two sketches.
Call them design guidelines, renderings or what you will, they're a lot more radical than the test mules that have been spied floating around Northern Europe this past winter - but that doesn't mean the real thing won't be sleek, curvaceous and Eurocentric in the best Peter Schreyer sense of the word.
Despite the (slightly, we hope) exaggerated wheel-arch flares, the drawings also show a strong family resemblance to the Sportspace concept shown in Geneva a couple of weeks ago, reinforcing speculation that Kia envisages an estate version of the new Optima, perhaps as early as the fourth quarter of 2016 or early in 2017.
SONATA PLATFORM
We do know the new Optima is based on the current Sonata platform from sister company Hyundai, which gives us a basis from which to speculate that it will be a little longer than the previous Optima, most of which will be allocated aft of the B pillar to compensate for headroom lost to that swooping roofline.
It's also likely to share the Sonata's drivetrains, so we can expect to see an uprated 1.7-litre CRD1i turbodiesel in Europe, as well as revised versions of the 1.6 and two-litre turbopetrol fours and the naturally-aspirated, direct-injection 2.4 GDI engine, there and in North America.
Given the timing of the Sportspace concept, there's also a good chance that its T-Hybrid powertrain - a 1.7 CRDi, a small electric motor and a 48V lead-carbon battery - could feature in the new Optima, although probably not in South Africa.
Kia SA says the new Optima is under consideration for local release, possibly in the first quarter of 2016, but that production of variants with right-hand-drive and metric instrumentation will not begin until late in 2015. Only then will the final decision be made, depending on the state of our yo-yo currency.