Kia Is Making Affordable Wagons A Reality Again

Kia Is Expanding The K4 Family, Literally

Station wagons have been making way for crossovers for years, but the body style has never entirely disappeared. Porsche has a couple, BMW has one, and so does Audi. To be fair, those are all rather premium brands, but Kia is working on a solution for those of us with shallower pockets. The new Kia K4 sedan (which currently starts at $21,990 before destination) is an outstanding vehicle with very few clear flaws, save perhaps an awkward rear end, and with the sighting of a wagon variant undergoing testing across the Atlantic, that may soon be resolved too. After following up the sedan with the reveal of the 2026 K4 hatch in April, this is the perfect way to take advantage of a car that was named a 2025 North American Car of the Year finalist.

Instantly Recognizable Styling

Despite the test engineers draping the front bumper, hood, doors, and entire rear end of this test vehicle, it’s clear that the wagon will adhere to the styling language of its aforementioned siblings, with an LED graphic at the front that moves in three directions. At the rear, each taillight is shaped like an upturned L, but it remains to be seen how this will affect the rear as a whole. The roof has a slight slant in profile, and although it’s difficult to determine just how sharply the rear glass will fall away and where the tailgate will begin to face the floor, it appears that the wagon will have a shape that sits smack bang in the middle of the sedan and the hatch. Although we can see that this is a near-production vehicle, the benefit of canvas camouflage is that false panels can easily be inserted under it to disguise the shape of a vehicle. Still, with Kia’s focus on value, we doubt there’ll be too severe a space-wasting fastback silhouette, especially since the sedan already looks so much like one.

It’s Probably Not For Us Anyway

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Unfortunately, there’s no indication that this variant will make its way stateside. The K4 sedan and hatch are both sold here, and neither is available in Europe, at least for the time being. Some theories point to a wagon being sold in Europe to take advantage of the loyal following the body style has there, where it has never truly died out, and here in America, the revival of the wagon is barely a heartbeat at this point. Of course, if enough potential buyers clamor for it in the comments sections of articles like these and fill social media channels with more of the same sentiments, Kia may well reassess the situation. That said, the tariffs on imported cars may make that impractical anyway. We’ll know soon enough; expect a reveal before the end of the year.