What have our beloved Korean cars been up to this week? I am very excited to see what is up with Kia, since this is going to be the star of the day. Always ready to surprise its fans with plenty of great news and interesting concepts and let us not forget about the stunt pulled by Kia and Hyundai in the whole lawsuit business. It has to make up for that by one mean or another, right? Anyway, Kia has prepared three wonderful news that will make our weekend. 1. You know that last week we have talked about the K3 model that is supposed to go on business and we were all pulling for it to have a long and happy life. Apparently, its magic has already began since on November 10th, Kia Motors has announced that the cumulative pre-order sales have already reached 20,034 units. A fabulous number if you take into consideration that the statistics for this year were targeted at 19,000 units. Kia Motors also declared that those who are interested in ordering a car here, have to wait a month to receive the K3 after signing the contract because of some problems in orders. All we can say is “way to go Kia K3”! May all your future models have the same success.
2. Second on the list is the Ray of hope that we came across some time ago. Kia developed a new model for the Korean Domestic Market with a new version for the 2013 lineup. Its name is Kia Ray GTO and has a small 1-liter, turbocharged Kappa engine that produces 106 hp and 14 kgm of torque. This little guy is combined with a CVT transmission and there are even some models that go equipped with ISG idling system, leaving the Ray with a fuel consumption of only 5.37 l/100 km. Besides being so economical in traffic, it also has LED front position lamps, rear LED combination lamps and a 60/40 folding rear bench. Pretty amazing, don’t you think?
3. And last but not least, Kia is bragging with their Head of Design, Peter Schreyer who left Audi and Volkswagen in order to seal the deal with the Korean auto manufacturer. Apparently now Ferdinand Piëch, Volkswagen’s Head of the Supervisory Board and Chairman has simply stated that “We should not have let him go.” This coming from a German, it is pretty tough and kind of suggest a defeat. But I am sure they will find someone else. Not as good as Schreyer, but close. Who knows what many talents will be born afterwards! This is pretty much all the news that we have managed to gather this week about Kia and its amazing new models. We do hope that for the future, Kia and the other Korean car manufacturers will be able to expand their work and come up with more and more updates. Due to the recession and other financial problems I expected things to be a little rougher but tradition remains important for brands that have managed to create a name. We wish everyone a successful last month and hopefully until the end of the year we will be able to have access to other models too. Have a nice weekend!