Hyundai will build Kia’s YN minivan in Czech Republic

Vehicle that will help Kia Motors keeping up high sales volumes in 2009, will be the upcoming “cee’d plus” minivan. Codenamed YF, the new Kia minivan will be joining European Kia range late next year, when it is expected to start hitting European Kia dealers.

The YN minivan is a brand-new Kia model and belongs to the fast-growing mini MPV car-segment. Technically, the YN minivan is very close to the Soul crossover. It does feature completely different exterior body style, but under the skin, it’s the same car. Both, Soul and YN, will use the same transmissions and a wide range of fuel-efficient gasoline and diesel engines.

It bases on the same platform as the funky Kia Soul. Both use a stretched B-segment car platform, which will later also spawn a next generation Rio hatch, which was announced to make it’s official debut sometime in 2010-2011.

Similar as cee’d hatchback, the YN has also been developed especially for European market, so most probably, it will not be crossing European borders. It will also be built in Europe, but surprisingly, not by Kia! The YN minivan will be produced at Hyundai’s new factory in Czech Republic.

Less than a month ago, Hyundai held an official launching ceremony for it’s first European manufacturing plant. It was announced that Hyundai will build three different models there. At the moment, Hyundai only runs i30 hatch production, but it will soon add two other models to production lines.

One of them will be the Kia YN, which production has been scheduled to commence in November 2009 with an estimated production of 100,000 vehicles annually. Official debut of the YN has not been officially announced yet, but we are expecting to see it for the first time at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show in September 2009.