The Kia Stinger could bow out of production as early as next year as the Korean car-maker makes space for a new hybrid variant of the Kia Carnival.
According to Daily Car, the South Korean plant responsible for production of the large rear-wheel drive sports sedan is set to be retooled in 2022 to manufacture future electrified vehicles including the Carnival people-mover.
Citing a production plan shared with Kia’s manufacturing partners, the report says the retooling process will commence early next year.
That could render the Kia Stinger a one-hit wonder, with the final examples rolling down the production line by mid-2022.
Kia has not officially commented on the matter and, locally, Kia has maintained it has no guidance on the Stinger’s long-term outlook.
Revered as a natural successor to discontinued homegrown large sedans like the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore, which were axed along with Australian production by both car-makers in 2016 and 2017 respectively, the Kia Stinger has enjoyed moderate sales in Australia during its six-year lifespan.
In the first six months of 2021, Kia shifted 967 examples of the Stinger, according to VFACTS – a 13.6 per cent year-on-year increase. In the same period, the Kia Carnival has amassed 3365 registrations.
Although modest in the scheme of Kia’s overall sales, those numbers still exceed what some car-makers sell in an entire calendar year.
There has been uncertainty over the Stinger’s long-term future for some time. Kia’s European design boss, Gregory Guillaume, conceded the Stinger’s future was in limbo as far back as 2019.
“There’s the volume expectation with Stinger. I mean, we never really expected to do massive volumes with the car, which was a halo car… [But] we did want to be successful at least in America – the market where we thought there’s a chance actually that it works,” said Guillaume at the time.
“At the moment I’m not sure it’s doing as good as we had hoped – but the thing is we had very high… expectations for that market.”
In Australia, the Kia Stinger was launched in September 2017, adopted by a number of state police forces including Queensland, West Australia and the Northern Territory, and received what is normally considered a mid-life update in December 2020.
Whereas most mid-cycle upgrades bring comprehensive design and technical overhauls, the facelifted 2021 Kia Stinger received only minor upgrades to its exterior and interior design and few equipment updates, plus higher prices.