Auto News – Daily Last Auto News

Last Auto account – Kia vows to concealment VW as superior baron Next Rio will accept top-grade accomplishment to bout VW, follows Venga cues, but architecture arch Schreyer says appearance will mark out all new models

Look out Volkswagen – Kia is out to get you! In an absolute account with Auto Express, administration accepted that the backup for the Korean giant’s Rio supermini will aim to bout the VW Polo for quality, but with a greater bang of style.

The account came at the UK barrage of the new Sportage crossover – the aboriginal complete Kia to be styled by architecture arch and above Audi man Peter Schreyer.

Head of artefact planning David Labrosse told us that while his close is targeting VW’s superior benchmark, “we don’t wish all of our cars to attending the same”.

He added: “When we launched the Cee’d in 2006, it showed that Kia can body a car that can attempt in Europe. With the Sportage, we are introducing appearance and exceptional superior to an affordable model.”

This aesthetics will extend beyond the Kia ambit – and the next car to get the analysis is the new Rio, due in 2011.

Schreyer accepted that it would be recognisable as a Kia, and use the latest accumulated grille architecture (as apparent on the Venga in our capital picture). But he said it wouldn’t necessarily allotment its architecture cues with the Sportage. “Kia isn’t abashed of aggravating something different,” he explained. “Elements of the Sportage wouldn’t accept fabricated assembly if it was congenital by anyone else. That abandon to agreement agency we can action cars that humans desire, rather than basal transport.”

More data on Kia’s affairs for 2011 – which cover the barrage of four new models – will be appear at the Paris Motor Show in October. The aggregation is aswell able to yield the wraps off “something exciting” at the French exhibition.