Kia has announced that its Quoris luxury sedan is going on sale outside of South Korea later this year. The rear-wheel drive Quoris, known as the Kia K9 in Korea, is the company’s latest move to tempt upmarket consumers into the showrooms with a combination of high-tech gadgetry, opulent trimmings and a dash of GT styling.
Kia calls the Quoris its “flagship” car and the emphasis is squarely on luxury. The styling takes its notes from Kia’s earlier GT Concept with sharp lines and LED headlamps, but the general feel is bit tamer and notably less aggressive. This is car for the posh suburbs rather than the Nurburgring.
The export Quoris will share much with the K9. It has a V6 3.8 liter direct-injection engine with an 8-speed automatic gearbox that delivers a respectable 249 bhp and 291 lb-ft at 5100 rpm (395 Nm) of torque. There’s no word on top speed or acceleration and the mileage isn’t great - only 24 mpg (9.8 L/100 km). The Quoris also has controls to set the suspension, steering, engine and transmission for various road conditions or driving styles.
What Kia does want to talk about is the interior, and that’s loaded to the rafters with comfort and technology. Trimmed in NAPPA leather, the front seats are powered, heated and ventilated and the driver’s seat has 16-way adjustment and memory settings for two people. The rear seats have heated cushions and lumbar back supports and there's also a powered sunroof.
On the entertainment front there’s a multimedia rear-seat system with 9.2-inch (23.36 cm) monitors. There’s also a Lexicon audio system consisting of a 12-channel digital amplifier mounted in the trunk, two speakers in each front door, three in each rear door, four in the dashboard center and two surround-sound speakers and inverted sub-woofer positioned in the rear parcel shelf.
Another standout feature is a head-up display that automatically adjusts to light conditions and feeds the driver information on speed, the local speed limit, navigation directions and blind spot detection.
The Quoris comes with keyless entry and an AFLS (Adaptive Front Lighting System) that enables the full LED headlamps to adjust their angle and width automatically to provide the right light for any speed. Four cameras mounted around the vehicle provide a 360-degree image of the car's location on the sat-nav screen to aid driver awareness of the surroundings.
A Smart Cruise Control uses radar to keep a safe distance from the car ahead by applying the brakes automatically if it gets too close and with its PGS (Parking Guide System), the Quoris can assist the driver in parking by either showing on the sat-nav screen the car’s trajectory or taking over the steering when parallel parking while the driver operates the accelerator and brakes.
Official pricing for the Quoris is yet to be announced.
Source: Kia
Volkswagen built a heck of a car in the Phaeton, but it didn't sell. It's not about the technology - it's simply about the fact that people can't get their heads around spending "six figures on a VW."
The stupidest thing about that episode is that VW AG owns several luxury brands including Audi and Bentley, the customers of which have no problem dropping six figures for these brands. The "wagon for regular folks", "Volkswagen" is not an upscale brand (although it is perceived as a higher quality for those aspiring to the higher brands, which is fine). The point is, the Phaeton was essentially an A8, but they already had that kind of car - the A8.
When I was a kid, Hyundai was an "affordable" ("cheap") car. They've come a long way, successfully raising the quality, styling, fit and finish, kudos to them. They also acquired Kia, which should have allowed them to maintain a presence in the market being vacated by Hyundai's move upmarket.
To attempt to now move Kia up? I'm be amazed if it works. Granted, maybe it'll work in South Korea. But it doesn't jive with the idea that someone going to purchase a luxury vehicle doesn't want the showroom experience sullied by low-brow sales action at the same time.
http://jdautotalk.blogspot.com
Styling is very derivative, it manages to clone BMW, Jaguar and Lexus. They'd probably gain more credibility in Europe by doing their own thing. That said, Europeans are notorious 'badge snobs'- even mid-table manufacturers such as Citroen and Renault have struggled to sell significant numbers of their high-end cars. Although Citroen are gaining a lot of respect for their smaller cars, such as the DS range, because they are more individualistic than the mainstream but technologically ordinary.
If your only single claim to fame is that you make the absolute cheapest car as soon as someone else makes one for cheaper you become obsolete over night.
If Hyundai was still the same company form the 90's that is pretty much what would happen to them if China ever did manage to enter the US car market.
Kia is popular lately and I agree with others on the similarity to BMW design. The Kia Optima to me looks a lot like the BMW 3 series: http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/2011-Kia-Optima-w-grafitti.jpg