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Bruce Newton20 Jul 2015
NEWS

No name change for Kia

Swap to alpha-numeric won't be happening, says Korea

Kia's aim to hit 50,000 sales in Australia in 2019 will almost certainly have to be achieved with the current naming policy for its vehicle range.

Earlier this year Kia Australia chief operating officer Damien Meredith told motoring.com.au that he would like to change from names to alpha-numeric badges for the Korean company's local line-up.

But the request has gained little support at head office and it seems names like Cerato, Sportage, Carnival, Rio and Sorento are here to stay.

Under the alpha-numeric strategy, which is used in South Korea, passenger vehicles gain a K (for Kia) and a number to denote their segment size. So a Rio would be a K2, the Cerato a K3 and the Optima a K4.

In theory, the SUVs would be badged KX and a number for their size, so the Sportage would be KX3 and the Sorento KX4.

At the time Meredith said he saw the change in badging as a boost for model recognition.

But at a media roundtable last week, Kia Australia media and corporate communications boss Kevin Hepworth said there was little prospect of the changeover being approved.

"He [Meredith] does love alpha-numeric, but it hasn't been advanced at all," said Hepworth. "He still does want it but he's not getting a lot of love out of Korea for that at the moment.

"The sticking point is if we went alpha-numeric it would have to be on everything, it wouldn't be a mismatch. It wouldn't be one of this and one of that."

Meredith, who is ex-Hyundai, has cited the popularity of the i30 small car versus Kia's equivalent Cerato as evidence of the strength alpha-numeric branding can create.

For the first six months of 2015, Kia had sold 5528 Ceratos, which is roughly how many i30s were sold in June alone as it knocked the Toyota Corolla and Mazda3 off the top sales perch.

But Cerato is still Kia's top seller in what is shaping up to be a record year for the brand. It has sold 16,660 vehicles in the first six months of 2015, putting it 8.9 per cent ahead of 2014 and also up on 2012, when it achieved its current 30,758 record.

Hepworth confirmed the brand expected 2015 to be a record year as it pushed on towards 50,000 sales in 2019, a figure that would guarantee it sits in the top 10 vehicle brands in the country.

"We are very happy with where we are in the market right now, we are ahead of projections and ahead of business plans," he said.

"I can't tell you an exact number for 2015, but low 30,000s would be our target."

In the second half of the year Kia is expecting a low-rate finance deal to boost interest in the slow selling Proceed GT, Rondo and Soul, while it has recently added more variants to the Rio range, in the form of the SLi and Sport.

The next generation Optima mid-size sedan arrives late this year. The Picanto micro-car and Sportage SUV are both coming in early 2016.

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