USA Today Business Section. Parent corporation Hyundai expresses its desire today to shut down the KIA brand. They say they are taking the action after seeing what happens to a healthy brand that branches out to far.
Doesn’t make sense. It’d be like GM deciding their Chevy division was doing too well and might detract from GMC.
KIA was dragging the healthy parent, Hyundai down, just like GM having too many divisions was part of their downfall, makes perfect sense.
When you consider how much it cost to develop, style, and market the Kia Soul and a few other new-design KIA vehicles, if Hyundai really does pull the plug on their KIA division, this will make Ford’s loss on the Edsel venture look like chump change.
Hyundai is making an shrewd business move in my opinion. They may be around a long time if they “pull the trigger” on this decision.
It makes good sense. Hyundai’s quality has really come up but Kia’s quality was/has always been in the toilet. Hyundai is the parent company so they can take the blame but that’s the way it is.
I have heard that plenty of banks will not loan money on used Kia’s since they are rolling POC’s.
I don’t see that story online, though I did see a Wall St 24/7 article claiming Kia was one of 10 brands you would likely see disappear in 2011.
Does Hyundai have the power to do this, though? They currently own about 40% of Kia, according to Hoovers, so they’re probably the largest shareholder but not a majority holder…
I saw that article. Kia has a lot of company. It’ll be a lengthy procession to the corporate graveyard this coming year.
What day did it appear? I didn’t see it this last week (Tue-Fri). Kia just opened a plant in Georgia in 2009. I did a web search and the only article I found was the WSJ opinion piece about brand names that may disappear in 2011, including Kia.
Friday business section,mb saw it.
Yeah, makes sense, no real separation between the two brands. I would bet big that the Soul and maybe some others will become Hyundais. I wonder if they’ll then come out with a premium brand, like Toyota/Lexus and Ford/Lincoln.