10 of the Kia Telluride's Coolest Design Details, from the Designer Himself (2024)

Designer Tom Kearns owns two Porsches, a 1994 911 Carrera 4 widebody, and a manual 2017 911 Carrera. Both are classic examples of timeless proportions and clean form, descriptors that can as easily apply to a large SUV as to a sports car. "Everyone tries to make [SUVs] as sporty as possible, angry, aggressive," he notes. With the Telluride, "it's not all these crazy, diving lines." The theme is simplicity, and we think the truck looks refined and executed with upscale restraint.

That minimalist message doesn't apply to the lifted, modified Tellurides on mud tires left over from last year's SEMA show that Kia test drivers demonstrated at the Detroit show on an improvised off-road course. (The SUVs came without mufflers, so you could hear them from across Detroit's Cobo Center.) And you know what, we dig 'em—so, future Telluride owners, know that Kearns' clean aesthetic can rather easily be given the brutalist Jurassic Park treatment for a bad-ass overhaul.

Kearns used to play hockey as a kid, although supposedly those memories didn't influence the two inner lighting elements on the Telluride's taillights. Even though Kearns readily deploys the hockey stick descriptor, he says the intent behind the taillight internals' shapes was a "simple graphic statement." These thin, vertical lights hook into the tailgate and overlap a few inches and represent an uncommon shape unique among today's SUVs (well, at least until the Cadillac XT6 arrived).

Placed far apart on the fender edges, the taillights emphasize the vehicle's width and shoulder creases while incorporating the mandatory side marker lights. On many other vehicles, these marker lights are separate, carved into the lower fenders as an afterthought; here, they're nicely resolved.

Among SUVs, few are more elegant than the full-size Range Rover. Kearns admits that the Range's grille was an inspiration behind the Telluride's, though he didn't exactly trace its design onto the Kia's face. The grille's square opening and the hexagonal patterns are familiar, as is the use of wide-spaced capital letters spelling out "Telluride" on the leading edge of the hood.

Kia's corporate grille is short compared to the big-mouth schnozes popular today, with a central section that pinches in toward the badge and outer edges that curve upward to form a half-smile. On the Telluride, this look graces the brand's widest-ever grille, a "straightforward, functional look" that Kearns likens to modern architecture. He also restrained his stylists from festooning the SUV's front end with excessive air intakes and large headlights. The front lights' vertical orientation matches the taillights', and their placement far out on the corners of the Telluride's face similarly emphasizes the truck's width.

Nearly every modern SUV has small roof spoilers that improve aerodynamic performance. Kia has applied this trick to the Telluride and added smaller vertical skirts (also an emerging trend among competitors) along each side of the rear window to further reduce turbulence in the air passing by the rear end. Kearns says the "cliché" route would have been to blend the spoiler and skirts into a single, body-color piece that wraps around the tailgate. Instead, the Telluride sports separate, blacked-out skirts on each side of its rear glass beneath a body-color spoiler.

In trucks especially, grab handles serve an actual purpose, helping passengers haul themselves up into tall cabins or brace themselves when the vehicle is traversing extreme grades and bumpy terrain. Kearns knows Telluride owners likely won't drive with such ferocity, but nevertheless designed a chunky pair of handles into the SUV’s center console. Hey, looks are everything, and the handles provide a handy perch for rocker switches controlling the heated and cooled seats. The pieces will look familiar—similar grips are found in the new Mercedes-Benz GLE and Porsche Cayenne—and they’re satisfying to hold.

Center control stacks canted several degrees toward the driver (as opposed to facing straight back at the rear of the car) used to be a BMW thing. Kia inserted the same subtle effect in the Telluride. It helps the driver see the central display and assorted controls better. The design also blends nicely into the Telluride's wide dash. Put in designer terms, "This communicates that this is a larger, substantial vehicle," per Kearns.

A Size-XL vehicle, naturally, deserves size-XL badges. Yet the Telluride could probably do without as large a Kia badge as it has. Kearns readily admits that the Telluride's logo is its most glaring fault. Blown up at this size and stuck to a vehicle this sophisticated and expensive, it just looks . . . bad.

"I cannot disagree," Kearns tells us in response to questions over the logo. The piece has the same generic, value-brand appearance of the one that debuted on the 1994 Sephia. More than anything, the logo betrays the total transformation Kia's quality and market position has undergone in the past decade. Kearns says that new logo designs have been proposed for years, but none of the ideas have taken off. Changing a company logo is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor, as the design is a key part of its branding; in brief, it is the soul of a company's identity boiled down to a single graphic. Kia can and should do better, and it's encouraging to hear that a badge overhaul has been—and likely still is being—considered.