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Wagons Kia Rio Kia Rio
605 messages, Last post on Nov 02, 2009 at 5:30 AM
You are in the Kia Rio Forum. Your Host is kcram
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IIRC I liked the early look of the 2006 Hyundai Accent's body a tad better than the 2006 Kia Rio's body. I think with these small HyunKia cars it will come down to how they look in person and how they drive during test drives. It will be hard to let go of the "sitting up higher" driving experience of the '01 Kia Sportage 4x4 and what I am thinking the sitting position will be on the 2006 Kia Sportage. I really like the job Kia did with the new Sportage and I really like the new Hyundai Tucson as well. Fantastic new designs and Kia has already won JD Power awards for the new Sportage and Amanti designs. |
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Replying to: spectraman (Sep 29, 2005 9:48 am) I went there to buy a 2005 Rio Cinco Please don't anyone tell me I should have bought a Spectra instead! However it worked out great as they had a 2004 Rio Cinco with 1,917 VERFIED miles on it (I had it checked it out myself) Sure saved me a bundle! |
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I am a total sucker for hatchbacks, so I'm waiting for this Rio5 to get here ASAP. I need a car pretty quick. I mean within a couple of weeks. Any word, Kia people? I saw the 06 Rio, and it definitely looked serviceable. The 5-door would just fit my needs more. |
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due at American dealers, but I just saw a black 2006 Kia Rio 4-door sedan that looked impressive in person. Black worked well for it. Is the Kia Rio5 due at dealers in November? I want to look at them as well.
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Replying to: iluvmysephia1 (Oct 05, 2005 3:36 pm) |
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I asked my sales guy at my KIA dealership last night if the Hyundai-KIA strike back in August may have impacted the availability of Rios. He said that he had heard that it had. The sales guy also said that the dealership's owner was just in Las Vegas at some kind of conference, and he reported back that Rios are flying off of other dealer's lots as fast as they trickle in. With the gas situation that's no surprise. Now if they could just get some inventory in!!! The web says that KIA was planning on losing 10,569 units of production due to the strike. I couldn't find out if that number was ever confirmed or increased. I couldn't determine how that loss was spread across models either. One interesting factoid I discovered while looking this up was that Hyundai only owns 38% of KIA. This means that KIA must still have some autonomous capabilities of its own. Interesting enough, that's about the same percentage of ownership as the Ford family has in voting shares (40%) in the Ford Motor Company. -SM |
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Now... if only KIA can get them on the lots!! http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf2005106_7775_db016.htm Excerpt: "It has come to this: even Texans are having second thoughts about their big trucks. In Fort Worth, deep in the heart of truck country, the Mortiz Kia used-car lot is packed with big sport-utes and minivans that buyers have traded in for cars that look pint-size by comparison, including the Sportage small SUV and Spectra compact." |
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Geez... I hope this is a good move for KIA. We all know how successful Volkswagen of America's been lately!!!  http://www.autonews.com/news.cms?newsId=13504 Excerpt: Automotive News / October 07, 2005 Peter Butterfield has left Kia Motors America, Inc. as president and CEO, the company said Friday. He has been replaced by J.H. Lee, who was senior executive vice president of Kia Motors Corp. Volkswagen's former head of North America, Len Hunt, 50, will join Kia Motors America as its COO. The details behind Butterfield's departure were not immediately available. -SM |
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I wonder what Mr.Butterfield is gonna do. Stay in automotive management or venture into another area? The '06 Kia Rio's are probably just on the verge of hitting Kia sales lots all over America. Give it a few more days or a week or two more before getting too nervous about it. That is interesting about Hyundai only owning 38% of Kia. This is a subject that I'd love to get more information on. I'd love it if a Kia and/or Hyundai worker, or people that work at each company, would write a book about what goes on in their neck of HyunKia. Inside the factories. I'd buy it in a second. I have always read that Hyundai owns 51% of Kia. Kia owns the remainder, but not all. South Korean banks own a percentage of non-Hyundai/Kia share as well, as a result of some serious financial difficulty Kia had right around 1998. I was just starting to follow South Korean cars then and it was not sure if Kia would pull out of that mess. The devaluation of the Korean Won didn't help matters and a very troubled Korean economy made things tense at Kia Motors. Hyundai swallowing up Kia has helped Kia financially, yet it is my humble opinion that Kia Motors would have always kept afloat by virtue of their lessons learned with Mazda and Ford Motor Company through the 80's and 90's. Kia is South Korea's oldest car maker. Kia's engineering department is vey capable, and in 1998 I was quite sure that another, large car maker would find their talents irresistable and buy them out. Look what GM decided to do regarding Daewoo. That's a horse of another flavor for another day, though, I realize. spectraman, were you following the trouble Kia was having back in 1998? What are your thoughts on that debacle? They have certainly come around and are going very strong exporting all over and building all over the world now. I'd say their future is so bright they best be wearin' some solid Burton Cummings-Randy Bachman shades from here on out. 
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Replying to: iluvmysephia1 (Oct 07, 2005 8:38 am) Here's one recent reference to the percentage of ownership I found: http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Symbol=US:HMC&Feed=AP&Date=20050902&ID- - - =5068366 Hyundai, maker of the Sonata midsize sedan and the luxury Equus, has ambitions with Kia to become the world's sixth-largest carmaker by 2009. Hyundai owns 38.7 percent of Kia. And here's an older reference I found from around 1998 which explains that 51% of KIA's stock had to be auctioned, and that Hyundai would also find some additional investors (to probably share some the stock with). "The third largest producer, Kia Motors Corporation, was forced into bankruptcy and its creditors forced the sale of 51 percent of Kia‘s stock at auction. No companies submitted bids during the two previous auction attempts. On the third attempt, bids were submitted by three Korean auto companies, Hyundai Motor Company, Samsung Motor Inc., and Daewoo Motor Company, and one foreign company, Ford Motor Company. (Ford owns 9.4 percent of Kia and Ford‘s 30 percent-owned Japanese affiliate, Mazda Motor Corporation, owns 7.5 percent of Kia.) On October 19, 1998, Korea‘s largest auto company, Hyundai, was selected as the winning bidder by the panel overseeing the auction after they disqualified Ford's bid. Following the auction, a Ford Motor Company spokesman stated that the auction had been a fair one without prejudice against foreign participants. Hyundai‘s chairman announced that the company would seek additional foreign investors, including Ford, in Kia. The acquisition of Kia would give Hyundai control of over 60 percent of Korea‘s automobile market." And no... I was not a big follower of either Hyundai or KIA until I bought my Spectra a year ago. I *did* have a friend that swore by his '86 Hyundai Excel though. It looked like a piece-of-junk, but it always started and got him where he wanted to go. That was the limit of my experience until I purchased. Until last year, I was a combination Plymouth/Ford/Chevrolet owner. I guess KIA can claim me as a "conquest" sale. -SM |
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