We all know the score – Kia is the industry darling and has been for the last couple of years thanks to its meteoric rise in quality, design and brand image.
Yet here in China – a brand-savvy market don’t forget – someone in the comms department didn’t get the memo. While at the front of the stand sit the (impressive) Rio, Optima, Sportage et al., on the main stage, next to the on-brand Trackster concept, sits a VQ-R, or a 10-year old Sedona to you and I.
As a form of low-cost, dependable transport, that’s fine, but as a piece in a strategic jigsaw in which the final picture is a design-led vista it doesn’t fit. It’s an advert for how miserable and soulless Kias used to be. Its tacked-on tiger nose grille is as unconvincing as its (beige) interior plastics.
By Owen Ready
