More Golf R than GTI: Kia EV4 GT hot hatch driven

We have had small electric hot hatchbacks like the Alpine A290 and large ones like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N but as yet nothing in the real heartland of Volkswagen Golf GTI-sized machinery. Cue the phrase: until now.

To be fair, the lack of traditional family-sized electric hot hatches has been due to a near total absence of donor cars. Almost all 4.2- to 4.4m-long, five-door, five-seat EVs have been homogenised crossovers, in part because of the need to accommodate the depth of a battery pack. But a few years down the line, that just feels like an excuse. Where's the creativity?

The Kia EV4 was arguably the first electric family hatch in the traditional mould, and now Kia has decided to turn it into the first Golf GTI-sized electric hot hatch as well. The Cupra Born, Volkswagen ID 3 and MG 4 are the closest conceptual rivals, but those are noticeably taller and their hot derivatives either feel more like trim levels than bespoke performance models (the VZ and GTX) or are unengaging to drive (the XPower).

You might have noticed that I tested the Kia EV4 GT, this bona fide hot hatch version of the EV4, almost six months ago. Talking shop for a moment, last autumn Kia brought an early prototype of the GT to a Car of the Year event in Denmark, where it was launching the EV4, to give jurors a clearer idea of the full model range (which also includes a saloon) to come. We got there thinking this GT prototype was for static display, but the keys were handed over for short drives in exchange for a signature with lots of dos and mainly don'ts, one of which was don't write about it until now.

It seemed to catch even Kia representatives at the event by surprise, because information on the car we were testing was close to non-existent. The press release that came from the event focused only on some guff about the 'GT wrap' that hides the car's final styling underneath. There was no slideshow to sit through, as is de rigueur with any car tested on these first drive pages. The horror! Nor was there an engineer to sit in the passenger seat, as is almost always the case with such prototype drives, given the value of mules like these can run into the millions and they have their quirks. We were simply told not to press the literal big red button on the centre tunnel.

Credit to Kia for trusting us with it. At the time, it was an intense half an hour or so of journalistic investigation mixed with car reviewing to find out not only what the EV4 GT was and what it wanted to be but what it was like too. It was a fun 30 minutes, as it turned out.

My starting point for this car was actually a conversation with Kia development chief Manfred Harrer a few weeks earlier, in which he accepted the notion that the dynamic enjoyment of Kias hadn't kept pace with the improvements in design and desirability of the cars and he said the GT models would be his starting point in trying to address that. He has made good progress: the EV4 GT feels a good deal more alive than the standard EV4 on which it is based with both its powertrain and its chassis and the adjustability they offer together.