While flipping through the pages of social media, we stumbled upon an interesting video of a Transformer car in real. This is not a video uploaded by users about their home grown experiment, this is a video from the São Paulo International Motor Show 2010 held in Latin America. Korean carmaker, KIA Motors put up a fantastic show at the said event with their SUV, Mohave aka Borrego. Now, how fantastic can a SUV with that name be you may ask, here is what happened.
KIA Motors managed to pull the crowd to their event pavilion and started the show. Initially it seemed to be a normal SUV standing on the deck for visitors to glance at. And as the crowd thought that was it, music, smoke and lights grabbed the attention of the onlookers. The Mohave SUV they thought was a showcased car, was in fact KIA’s gimmick for the show. In just a few seconds after the music uplifted the atmosphere, the SUV stood up! And by ‘stood up’ we mean, it actually got on its feet. The Mohave took at stance as a robot for a while and then got back on its four. KIA Motors dubbed the transforming SUV as the ROBOKIA and also wore a nameplate of the same. The ROBOKIA of the show was a specially built Mohave that could pull of the transformer trick. Following the São Paulo International Motor Show, the ROBOKIA made various special appearances across many auto shows.
Here is the video of the ROBOKIA in action!
Well the transformation is not as astounding as we have seen in a series of movies based on the robo-aliens, but it definitely is a good attempt by the automaker for their marketing strategy.
The tech-mech details of the non-transforming Mohave SUV are as follows – the KIA Mohave/Borrego is available with petrol as well as diesel engine. The petrol propelled Mohave draws power from a V6 3,778cc engine that is capable of producing 270 Bhp at 6,000rpm and 362 Nm of twist. The V6 2,959cc CRDi Diesel engine makes 251 Bhp at 3,800rpm and 546 Nm at 2,000rpm. Both the engines push power to the rear wheels by a 8-speed automatic transmission.