Kia

Having shown off a sketch last week, Kia has now released the first photo of its Track'ster concept car. The model will bow later this week at the Chicago auto show, but is not slated for series production. The prior teaser sketch showed that the three-door Track'ster had a sloping ...    Read more

Want advertising time in the Super Bowl? For 2011, 30 seconds carried an average price of $3,100,000 and the trend shows no sign of slowing down, based on all the automotive interest this year. From 2007 through 2011, Nielsen data show that automotive advertising in the Super Bowl far surpassed spending ...    Read more

The compact and midsize crossover/SUV segments are two of the most toughly contested segments in the business. With January under 2012's belt, the sales race has just begun to heat up. In the compact segment, the Honda CR-V beat out hopefuls at Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, and Nissan for the crown, ...    Read more

A good dream could star literally anything, as long as it’s not the recurring one where you’re locked out of your house and not wearing any pants. Kia likes to think, however, that its new Optima Limited has a place in ...    Read more

It might be a stretch to call last month’s mid-size sales race a competition: not only did the top two competitors cement their respective places, the margins between the winners and losers were very, very wide. There’s no point in trying to escape the fact ...    Read more

This bold sketch is our first look at the Track'ster, a concept car that Kia will unveil next week at the Chicago auto show. The concept was penned by Kia's California design studio in order to explore the possibilities for future variants of the Soul hatchback. "If Soul is our rock ...    Read more

The celebration for Kia and Hyundai’s sales records isn’t over. Last month marked the highest January sales total ever for the Korean automakers. Kia is reporting an increase of 27.8 percent for a total of 35,517 units sold and Hyundai is reporting an increase of 15 percent overall and ...    Read more

Kia is recalling 145,755 Optima sedans from 2006-2008 and Rondo people movers from 2007-2008 for faulty clock spring assemblies in the driver airbags, which could cause the airbag to not deploy in a crash. The Problem: Certain Optimas and Rondos may have a clock spring contact assembly that could become damaged ...    Read more

Box cars are a niche product that have found their place in the market, and among the three in the segment, the Kia Soul continues to reign king – by a huge margin. Kia had an excellent 2011 overall, reporting a whopping 36.3 percent year-over-year sales gain over 2010. A ...    Read more

Both Kia and Hyundai are celebrating 2011 with record-breaking annual sales totals, with Kia reporting a 36.3 percent increase over 2010 totals, with 485,492 vehicles sold and the Soul exceeding 100,000 units sold. Hyundai sold 645,691 vehicles in 2011, representing a 20 percent increase compared to 2010 totals. ...    Read more

Although the 2011 auto show circuit initially focused mostly on new production debuts, concept cars began to come out of the proverbial woodwork as the year progressed. Venues like Geneva, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and L.A. brought us dozens of show cars that sent jaws hurdling towards the floor and left us ...    Read more

Plenty of new cars debut in twelve months’ time, and 2011 was no exception. While economic uncertainties and fears of high gas prices brought scads of new economy and hybrid cars to showrooms, 2011 also saw more powerful supercars and more thrilling sports coupes hit the market. Among this year’s ...    Read more

In a move reminiscent of Kia, Hyundai snagged a new design chief from a prestigious German automaker. Former BMW designer Christopher Chapman has been named chief designer of the Hyundai Design Center in Irvine, California, and will be responsible for new vehicle and concept design for the Korean automaker. "With ...    Read more

Just one month after introducing the Kia Ray to the Korean market last month, the automaker is already launching an electric version. The Kia Ray EV is the country’s first production electric vehicle, and will be offered exclusively in the ...    Read more

It might be the fact that Hanukkah is in full swing and Christmas is tomorrow, but we’re feeling the holiday spirit here at Automobile Magazine. Evidently, so is Kia: it has released a video of its Ray micro-van singing “Jingle Bells.” While we’ve heard songs made from car noises before, we ...    Read more

Sketches leaked online purport to show the next version of Kia’s Forte sedan. According to Kia World, these sketches show the 2013 Forte that will debut sometime next year. The leaked picture reveals a Forte sedan that is much more rounded and modern than the current model. In the profile sketch, ...    Read more

It’s a good year for gas direct injection and forced induction: both technologies took a sizable share of the wins on the 10 Best Engines list put out by Ward’s Auto. The 10 Best Engines list entered its 18th year this year, and unlike years past, featured only gasoline engines. Previous years had ...    Read more

All hail the Toyota Camry: it topped all of its mid-size sedan competitors in sales numbers last month by a sizeable margin, a key sign that the car’s 2011 redesign has reaped rewards for Toyota. Japan Leads (as usual), But There’s Trouble in Paradise It should come as little surprised that the ...    Read more

The end of the year is just around the corner, and the Koreans are in for a strong finish. Kia has already sold 116,278 more vehicles than it did in all of 2010, and Hyundai is seeing the same trend, with ...    Read more

Because of the NBA lockout, we won’t be hearing Blake Griffin's sneakers squeaking on the basketball court anytime soon, but we can hear him give some great advice regarding the 2012 Kia Optima. Earlier this week at the Los Angeles Auto Show, the towering basketball ...    Read more

It was only two seasons ago that Kia threw its hat into the motorsports ring with its Forte Koup tuned by Kinetic Motorsports. Now, after its first-ever championship in the 2011 Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, the Korean brand is looking to up the ante with not one, but ...    Read more

We can’t say we’ve ever looked at a Kia Soul, Nissan Cube and Scion xB and wondered, “What would you get if you combined all three and reduced the size by 30 percent?” Apparently Kia’s designers have -- and the result is this new Korean-market Ray. The Kia Ray is quite ...    Read more

Kia is going sporty with its newest crop of cars for the Specialty Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas. By sporty, don’t expect sports cars – instead, the automaker has crafted five custom cars based on athletic sports. ...    Read more

Both Korean automakers have reason to celebrate this month. Hyundai’s October sales are up 23 percent; and Kia’s sales are up 21 percent compared to the same time last year. Hyundai sales year-to-date have exceeded all of its 2010 sales and Kia has moved more than 400,000 units – the ...    Read more

It’s that time of the year again, and Consumer Reports has gathered data from 1.3 million subscribers to predict reliability on new models. Japanese brands still continue to dominate, while Ford has taken a nosedive with the worst results from the domestics. The new 2012 Ford Explorer, Fiesta, and Focus have ...    Read more