THE INEXORABLE ASCENT OF KIA

FROM BUDGET-FOCUSED FRINGE PLAYER TO MAJOR GLOBAL POWERHOUSE, KIA HAS BEEN ONE OF THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY’S TRUE TRANSFORMATION STORIES. HERE ARE THE KEY MILESTONES AND MODELS THAT HAVE MARKED THAT REMARKABLE RISE

- CURT DUPRIEZ

THE EV6’s victory at Wheels COTY 2022 marked two significant firsts for the award’s 59-year history: a maiden win for Kia, and for any vehicle from Korea. The fanfare around this headline achievement, announced in April, overshadowed another not-insignificant milestone Kia clocked up the following month. The Seoul company with just a quarter century of passenger-car presence locally, was the second-largest-selling nameplate in Australia for May. It was an industry first for the ‘challenger brand’, outselling the Mazda and Hyundai juggernauts and parking itself in the wheel tracks of the market-dominating Toyota.

Kia loosely translates from Sino-Korean to ‘rising from Asia’. And after 78 years of sometimes rocky corporate provenance from beginnings as a bicycle component manufacturer, today’s carmaker has well and truly arrived.

Of course, detractors may focus on the industry’s fluctuating supply issues in unprecedented times for Kia’s May result, but that doesn’t diminish the hard slog the brand has invested internationally and locally, yielding solid and steady sales growth in recently turbulent waters with what, in the longer burn, have been vehicles of ever-improving quality and appeal.

There’s more to the deepening hue of Kia’s purple patch than glowing accolades for its electric EV6 figurehead, a mere drop in its sales volume bucket. From the diminutive electrified Niro to the thumping older-school Stinger, two opposites in Kia’s portfolio, buyer demand has been on the up.