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By Jonathan Crouch

Introductionword count: 79

Originally a small coupe, Kia's Proceed became a small estate in 2019 - but a very stylish one. It sold alongside the brand's Ceed Sportswagon estate but offered swoopier 'shooting brake' styling to create a 'Fastback' look with that 'want one' factor. The brand promised that the drive dynamics would match the aesthetic promise - and updated the car in 2021 to create the version of it that we're going to look at here from a used buyer's perspective.

Modelsword count: 8

5dr Estate (1.5 T-GDI) [GT-Line, GT, GT-Line S]

Historyword count: 215

Kia called this Proceed a 'Shooting Brake'. Isn't that just another word for an 'estate car'? Well no, not really. A Shooting Brake, in contrast, is more of an occasional and much more stylised load-lugger, loved by sportsman - and especially shooting parties (hence the name) - from the 1950s and 1960s, particularly here in Britain. A kind of 'estate coupe' if you like, which is why virtually all 'shooting brake' designs from the last century had only three doors. Princess Anne's Reliant Scimitar GTE from the Seventies was one of these, with similar cars like the Lancia Beta HPE, the Jaguar XJS Lynx Eventer and the Volvo 1800ES dating from the same era. In more recent times, the 'Shooting Brake' concept made a comeback with designs like Ferrari's FF. But you'll know it better perhaps from two Mercedes models, 'Shooting Brake' versions of that Stuttgart brand's CLS and CLA models. It was the CLA Shooting Brake that prompted Kia to produce this stylish Proceed derivative, first launched in 2019, then updated at the end of 2021 to create the car we're going to look at here. With this facelifted model, the engine range was refined down to a single 1.5 T-GDI petrol unit. It sold until 2025, when it was discontinued and not replaced.

What You Getword count: 389

If you're going to sell on style, you have to make an effort and, sure enough, the Proceed shares only the front wings and bonnet with other Ceed body styles. The roof line is 43mm lower than on an ordinary Ceed SW estate and 5mm longer, plus the windscreen is 1.5-degrees more steeply-raked and the rear window is slanted 65-degrees off the vertical. Plus you get smart 17-inch wheels. This improved post-2021 model gained visual changes at the front end, including grille changes and a revised headlamp design, all in line with the improvements made at the time to the rest of the Ceed range. And it features more aggressive front bumper styling than you'd see on any ordinary Ceed. What the designers called a 'coast to coast' look for the rear that unites the LED tail lamps with the double exhaust pipes. Inside, it actually feels quite special, especially with the mandatory 'GT-Line' trim, which features leather and Alcantara sports seats with red-stitching and GT-Line badging. There's a sporty flat-bottomed steering wheel and black roof lining. For this revised model, a large 12.3-inch instrument cluster screen was paired with a 10.25-inch centre monitor to further enhance driver interaction. This model's lower hip point means you rather drop down onto the rear seat bases, but it does compensate to some extent for the reduced height of that swept-back ceiling, meaning that there's actually more headroom in the back than the exterior styling leads you to expect there might be. Even so, those of basket ball-playing statute still won't thank you much for a lift home. The rear roof ceiling height falls from 940mm in a Ceed Hatch to 890mm here. Leg room space is reduced too, down from 720mm in the hatch to 670mm in this shooting brake model. We still reckon though, that one six-footer could just about sit behind another in reasonable comfort, thanks to the scalloped seatbacks. The 594-litre cargo area (which is 50% bigger than that of a standard Ceed Hatch) actually offers more space than you'd get from conventionally-styled compact estates of this kind. Like station wagon versions of the Ford Focus, the Vauxhall Astra and the SEAT Leon from this era. And its capacity is only 31-litres less than you'd get in a Ceed Sportswagon, mainly because of this more steeply-raked rear screen.

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