Kia moves to change its image, hamsters and all

As a valet pulls up in front of the upscale Chops restaurant in Atlanta’s fashionable Buckhead neighborhood, a middle-aged businessman takes the keys and sheepishly looks around. “It’s only a rental car,” he says, as if the 2010 Kia Optima he’s driving is a mark of shame.

He’s not alone, admitted Ralph Tjoa, the product planning manager on the 2011 version of the Korean carmaker’s midsize sedan. “That’s the attitude we have to overcome.”

The smaller and lesser-known sibling of Korea’s main automotive manufacturer, Hyundai Motors, Kia was founded in 1944 as a bicycle parts and steel tubing maker, only entering the car business in 1973. Its products have been sold in the U.S. market for decades — though in its early years, only through its one-time American affiliate, Ford Motor Co., which rebadged entry-level offerings under nameplates like the Ford Aspire.

To most Americans, at least to those who are aware of the brand, Kia is still associated with the cheap-and-cheerful products that long dominated its lineup after it introduced a U.S. dealer network of its own in 1994. That’s an image the maker is out to transform, and Tjoa and his team are in the point position as they prepare the launch of the ’11 Optima.

Unveiled at the New York International Auto Show earlier this year, the Optima immediately earned kudos for its elegant and timeless design, which Kia’s new styling chief, Peter Schreyer – the former design director at influential Audi AG – has likened to “a well-tailored Italian suit.”

Schreyer’s hiring itself made headlines. Kia touted it as proof of its intent to become both a styling leader and a more up-market manufacturer.
Nonetheless, it won’t be an easy transformation, admitted the maker’s U.S. sales chief, Tom Loveless. Part of the challenge, he said, is that long-standing image as a maker of products sold only on price. There’s also the reality that relatively few Americans even know the Kia brand. Then again, said the executive, “We suffer from no perception, rather than a negative perception” among the new customers Kia hopes to reach.