MELBOURNE: Kia has unveiled the new 2016 Optima mid size saloon at the New York motor show.
The Optima changed the way people felt about the Kia brand, and KMA owes much of its growth and success to its head-turning design and sporty performance. It was – and still is to this day – a fresh alternative in the midsize sedan segment, and it amplified a five-year design-led transformation that propelled Kia to record-setting sales year-on-year,” said Michael Sprague, executive vice president, sales and marketing, Kia.
Speaking with website AutoGuide, Kia Motors America product chief Orth Hendricks said that while the Sportspace could prove popular in wagon-mad Europe, a US launch would likely not gel with the company’s established case for the new Sorento SUV.
“We looked at the volume and we looked at the number of people that would choose it and what it would cost,” Hendricks told the website at the New York Auto Show.
“What we found is that [an Optima wagon customer] is right on top of our Sorento buyer.”
Hendricks added that, for whatever good the Sportspace could do for Kia’s brand image, its potential for a likely incremental increase in overall sales would not justify the cost of development and production.
“It would be a whole other set of tooling to bring all that stuff in,” he said.
Together, the Optima and Sorento make up a huge 45 percent of Kia’s sales in the US, accounting for 261,540 sales between them in 2014.
The all-new Optima will hit Australia later this year, while the big new Sorento will land in the coming months.
