Kia Built Nadal a Car Out of the Courts He Conquered

Kia has built a full-size EV4 GT out of clay scraped from the tennis courts where Rafael Nadal won his 63 clay-court titles, and handed it to the retired champion at his academy in Mallorca.

The one-off is a tribute to a sponsorship that began in 2004, when Kia’s Spanish arm started backing a teenage Nadal, and it blends the automotive modeling clay that Kia’s designers use to shape every new car with the red court clay that defined his career. It is not a car anyone can drive. It has no interior and no powertrain, but it sits on production EV4 GT wheels and tires and keeps the hatchback’s exact proportions.

Kia announced the tribute from Manacor on November 2 and is releasing a series of films about its creation on its global YouTube channel and the Kia Europe website. White automotive design tape traces the body’s orange-red surface the way lines cross a court, and small lettering records the milestones. Kia’s release names his 63 clay titles, with wins in Monte Carlo and Rome, a record 50 consecutive sets won on clay, and the five seasons he finished as world number one. His 14 titles at Roland-Garros in Paris remain the record on that surface.

"For more than twenty years, Kia has been by my side throughout my career, through all the highs and the challenges," Nadal said in the release. "Receiving this tribute, created from the material that has defined so much of my journey, is incredibly meaningful."

Soohang Chang, president and CEO of Kia Europe, said Nadal’s "determination and resilience" had been central to the partnership since 2004. Nadal became Kia’s global brand ambassador in 2006, the year after his first Grand Slam title, and still holds the role after retiring from the tour. Carscoops reported on November 4 that the court clay was gathered from Monte Carlo, Paris, Rome and Madrid, and that the model was presented at the Rafa Nadal Academy.

Kia says clay modeling is still how its designers judge "proportions, surfaces, finishes and tensions" before a car is signed off, even as the rest of development goes digital, which is why a clay car is the brand’s idea of a fitting gift. The bespoke lines and lettering exist only on this one object and are not features of the production EV4 GT.

That production car is the real EV4 GT, a five-door hatchback with dual-motor all-wheel drive, 215 kW and 468 Nm of torque, which works out to about 288 horsepower and 345 lb-ft, and a 0-62 mph time of 5.6 seconds on tentative European figures. It also carries Kia’s GT Mode and Virtual Gear Shift, the simulated gear changes that first appeared on the EV6 GT. The EV4 that Kia sells in America is the sedan, and the company has not announced the GT hatchback for the United States.

The HyundaiHQ Take

This is a marketing stunt, and a good one, because the material is the message. Kia has spent two decades attached to the most durable name in tennis and chose to mark it with the one thing its design studios and a clay court have in common, rather than with another badge on a special edition. The part American buyers should notice is the car underneath. A 288-horsepower EV4 GT with a virtual gearbox is exactly the kind of affordable performance EV that Kia has so far kept away from US showrooms, and every time it shows the hatchback off like this the question of when it crosses the Atlantic gets a little louder.