Kia Australia is set to go all out with
a game-changing, image-boosting 200kW-plus turbocharged Optima sports sedan
late in the year, when it will reveal an all-new locally-tuned hero model.
"What
we'll do in regards to a sporty niche, with the next model change of Optima
we're looking very seriously at creating a sports model for that,"
revealed Kia Motors Australia
CEO Damien Meredith.
The
fourth-generation Optima will make its global debut at the 2015 New York motor
show in early April, showing off a brand-new design overseen by Kia/Hyundai design chief Peter
Schreyer.
It will
then arrive in Australia in the "October-November period" of 2015
according to Meredith, headlined by what will be its most potent performance
car yet.
It is
understood that Kia Australia
will overhaul the Optima halo model's suspension to a greater degree than
regular models – the company already recalibrates the chassis systems of every
vehicle it imports here to better suit local conditions.
The
Optima's dynamic transformation will be led by Graeme Gambold, Kia Australia's
"suspension whisperer" whose success with chassis tuning has been so
successful that the Brits have now adopted the Aussie calibration he developed
for the pro_cee'd GT, currently Kia's sportiest
model.
"Graeme
is very, very excited about getting his hands on the turbo Optima," said
Meredith.
"We'll
start tuning it probably before half year," he added.
"Jeff
[Shafer, head of product planning] goes to Korea in two weeks' time to talk
about what needs to be done and make things clear what we want to occur from a
Korean point of view and away we go."
Meredith
says that bespoke chassis configurations to suit Australian conditions gives Kia a point of
different over a lot of other Asian importers: "If you can localise the
setup, it resonates."
However
he noted that more needed to be done to better promote that fact.
Asked
if the new Optima 'GT' will mark the launch of a new performance sub-brand for Kia, a la Hyundai's SR
vehicles, Meredith said there were similarities but suggested Kia would take a different
approach.
"If
we were going do it, we'd probably do it where there's a little more
differentiation. The SR is more a café cruiser than an out-and-out performance
situation. It gets the brand out there, it's working [for Hyundai] and I
wouldn't criticise an organisation that sells over 100,000 cars a year,"
he stated.
"But
I think you'll find that Optima will be the first major change in that [sporty]
area and you will definitely see something more overt [in a performance sense]
from us.
"We're
definitely excited about it, and it's not that far away," he said of the
go-fast Optima.
Currently,
the Kia Optima is only
offered in Australia with a non-turbo 2.4-litre four-cylinder petrol engine
worth 148kW/250Nm but the beefy 204kW/370Nm 2.0-litre turbo powerplant
available in the US will ensure a more muscular offering, says Meredith.
"We're
pretty close to having that as part of the stable of Optimas available to us
when we launch," he noted of the turbo model.
In 2014
sales of the Optima dropped by around 30 per cent compared to the year before,
but the new-generation model – and a turbo hero model – would address this
decline says Meredith.
Direct
rivals for the red-hot Optima will be few and far between with the demise of
vehicles like the Mazda6 MPS, Volkswagen Passat R36 and other hotted-up medium
cars. The Subaru Liberty 3.6R is the closest in terms of power output with
190kW/350Nm. The Subaru also gets all-wheel drive, something the Optima may not
offer.
It's
not clear if the new high-performance turbo-petrol medium-sized car will dubbed
Optima GT but based on recent comments made by Kia's vice
president of overseas marketing, Soon-Nam Lee, the GT moniker used by Kia's current performance hero,
the pro_cee'd GT, will be expanded.
Kia
Australia is also keen to bring the sexy new Optima wagon to Australia , which
will make its debut at the 2015 Geneva motor show in March. That car, together
with a new tyre-frying sedan could provide the company with a one-two sucker
punch combination to put its medium car back on the map.
We'll
have more details on the new Optima from the Geneva motor show in March and
then New York in April.
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