2023 Kia Telluride Gets a Little Lift in Its New X-Pro Off-Road-ish Trim
The 2023 Telluride gets some mild improvements, a slight bit taller, and some more real, actual colors.
The Kia Telluride is still riding high on impressive sales figures from its three short years of existence, with nearly 100,000 of the Korean brand's flagship SUV sold in 2021 alone. Now, it gets a mid-cycle refresh, with some new bells and whistles to help entice anyone else shopping for a full-size SUV. The 2023 Kia Telluride gets new wheels, colors, and a front-end update, as well as a bigger infotainment screen and even a higher towing limit.
While the refresh isn't drastic, the new front bumper helps add an element of machismo to the Telluride, which it already had quite a bit of. The all-black-everything Nightfall edition is replaced with the X-Line and X-Pro trim levels, which offer trim-line embossed seats, exclusive wheels, a 10mm lift for slightly more ground clearance, and most crucially a towing mode with more advanced traction control and trailer sway control. And in the case of the X-Pro, a 500-pound towing weight increase, to 5,500 pounds total. The X-Pro additionally gets actual Continental A/Ts wrapping its 18-inch wheels for more sure-footed dirt traction.
Also new for 2023 is the option of downhill braking assist and standard forward-collision avoidance during left-hand turns. All models get a 2-inch larger screen (up to 12.3 inches), as well as three new colors that are actually colors (Midnight Lake Blue, Dawning Red, and Jungle Wood Green), so Kia is doing its part to turn back the tide of seas of silver.
While the all-electric E-GMP platform Kia EV9 is still ostensibly planned as part of the company's aggressive electrification strategy, the Telluride for now retains its 3.8-liter V6 in either a front-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive layout. Pricing for the 2023 model is still unannounced but expect it to be similar to the '22s, which start at $34,015 including the destination fee.
Overall, the new Telluride is what's expected for a mid-cycle refresh of a proven vehicle; there isn't a whole lot screaming for drastic changes when Tellurides are hot enough that they're averaging nearly $4,000 in dealer markups. I'm just excited to see more SUVs in colors again; make mine green, please?
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