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Marton Pettendy5 Mar 2019
NEWS

Kia Optima to be axed

Korean sedan will be the next victim of a plunging mid-size car market

The writing is on the wall for yet another model in Australia’s rapidly contracting mainstream mid-size car market, which has shrunk by 60 per cent in the last six years.

Kia Motors Australia chief operating officer Damien Meredith this week sounded the death knell for the unloved Kia Optima sedan, sales of which declined more than 20 per cent in 2018 and a further 42.5 per cent to February this year.

Meredith said 577 Optima sales in 2018 – an average of about 48 a month -- made the Optima unviable in Australia, where sales of sub-$60,000 medium cars slumped by 30 per cent last year.

“I doubt whether Optima will have a future after this year -- it’s just too hard,” he said.

“The reality is a car with 50 sales a month is just not worth it. It’s hard when you get a big fleet order, but take Camry Hybrid out of there and the segment’s in big trouble.”

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The year after the current Kia Optima was launched in 2011, Australians bought almost 70,000 mid-size cars and had 25 models to choose from.

Last year just 28,750 were sold across 17 models and sales are a further 6.2 per cent down so far this year, when just 11 models remain.

Mid-size models to disappear from the market since 2017 include the Citroen C5, DS 5, Holden Malibu and Insignia, Nissan Altima and Suzuki Kizashi.

Toyota’s now imported Camry remained the dominant player in the medium mainstream car segment last year with more than 15,000 sales -- down more than 35 per cent.

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It’s followed by the Mazda6 (3328 sales, down 8.7%), for which Mazda has signalled there will be a replacement, and the only other mid-sizers to sell in four-digit numbers are the Ford Mondeo, Volkswagen Passat, Skoda Octavia and Hyundai Sonata.

The new-generation Subaru Liberty may not be imported to Australia, and there’s unlikely to be another Ford Mondeo after the release of yet another facelift and a trimmed-down model range later this year.

Meantime, the next-generation Hyundai Sonata and i40 will merge into one model and, after debating the local future of its flagship sedan, Honda Australia has decided to release the new Accord in late 2019.

Even before it was released with lower prices in mid-2018, without Europe’s wagon derivative, the facelifted 2018 Kia Optima was put on notice by Kia Australia.

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Instead of Optima, Meredith says the Korean brand will concentrate on the rear-drive Kia Stinger, which is officially classified as a large car and found almost 2000 homes in 2018, its second year on sales.

“We’ll focus on Stinger in that market and we’d love to sell a few more,” said Meredith, who added that most Stinger customers are from western and northern metro suburbs and trade-ins are split evenly between homegrown Commodores/Falcons, European cars and other Kia models.

Sales of the bigger new Cerato hatch and sedan -- 16% of which are high-end GT models -- are strong, while Stinger sales are down eight per cent after two months of this year, but 89 per cent of buyers are still opting for the most expensive 3.3-litre twin-turbo V6-powered Stinger GT variant.

The Kia Stinger currently does police duty in Queensland, where 120 have been purchased, West Australia (100) and the Northern Territory (9), but NSW and South Australian police forces are also currently reviewing the rear-drive V6 sports sedan.

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