Kia's surprising new designs

Kia Motors, revelling in a 12.7 per cent year-on-year increase in global sales, is set to attack the Australian market in the next year with several new vehicles.

The subsidiary of the same company that owns Hyundai is also revelling in the latest J and D Power Initial Quality Survey, an industry quality report prepared in the US, which measures the number of faults per 100 new vehicles sold.

In 1999, Kia was at the worst end of the scale with 300 faults for every 100 vehicles. It is now running at just better than the industry average with 125 faults for every 100 vehicles while Mazda has taken the bottom spot at the worst end of the scale.

Kia's new seven-seater Rondo is coming next month and Kia Motors Australia director of sales and marketing, Bill Gillespie, has great hopes the Rondo, at $24,990 and the cheapest seven-seater in Australia, will go great guns for the Korean firm.

The Kia Soul has appeared two years in a row at various shows as a concept vehicle and Gillespie says a production version, looking very much like the concept car but without the 24-inch wheels, is due shortly.

He would not be drawn on exactly what the new vehicle might be called though admitted the Soul concept name was getting a lot of support.

He said the Cerato replacement will be an all-new car, not just a revamp of the current car, and it is due in Australia later this year.

And early in the new year Australia can expect to see a new muscular-looking seven-seat SUV, which has yet to be given a name.

Gillespie predicted a steady Australian market despite interest rate rises but said those at the bottom end of the market would struggle.

“We have 46 brands sold in Australia, a one million vehicle market. The US, a 16 million market, has 43 and Canada, with a 1.6 million vehicle market, has just 23,” he said.

“The top 12 brands in Australia sell 85 per cent of the vehicles. The other 34 brands have to make do with 150,000 vehicles or 15 per cent of the market.”

He predicted new Kia products would fit in much more with the Kia slogan “The Power to Surprise.”

He said with a research and development budget of 5 per cent of turnover, Kia was ahead of the European average of 3-4 per cent and Kia design centres had attracted several well-known German designers, which fit in well with the surprise slogan.

Gillespie predicted that although Kia and Hyundai were owned by the same parent, Kia's product range was already dissimilar to Hyundai's and the two Koreans would grow further apart in terms of products.

Meanwhile, the shape and evolution of future Kia vehicles was seen in the KOUP concept at the New York International Auto Show last week.

The KOUP concept is powered by a two-litre Theta II turbocharged with a Gasoline Direct Injection twin-scroll turbocharger producing 216kW of power.