I was on edmunds (think Dec 7th?) 2006, for Len Hunt’s 1 hour Q&A(Kia head guy in USA).
I asked him about 4 times about ” where’s the sporty car like Tiburon, or the Pro-C’eed, to compete with Scion tC”…. he ignored that(I also mentioned this story about small cars outselling suvs and cuvs, and he ignored it, saying hatches like the Rio 5 don’t sell?-something like that…
Anyhow, he thinks CUV’s/SUV’s are still the future?
right… lol…
this was the company, that a year aog(along with hyundai) said they would sell a mild hybrid Accent and rio, in Sept of 06, and would be the least expensive hybrid out there( about 45 MPG? somewhere in there).
Anyhow…. they decided nto release it as it was a “money loser”(this sort of sounds like Big 3 talk now, lol).
Anyhow, this should be made into a compact car, 200HP tops, I-4. They can do it with GEMA engines, w/o turbo, if they wanted to ( or at lesat 175HP GEMA engines).
make it Spectra0sized, but look sort of like this.

One guy said ” Hyundai/Kia tend not to listen very well”… people want a smaller Truck, not SUV/CUV…Whatever.
I like Kia but why do they need so many “suvs”, and minivans, and so few cars? they trying to be a truck-only division and Hyundai sell cars?

Whatever.

It does sort of look like the refl3x(Ford should have built that).

3) This is not a refl3x rip off. Sorry, Similar shape, but the refl3x had the weird doors, etc, and was a hybrid.

4) I agree witht he one psoter who said that this looks more like it should be a small coupe! I was poosted on the net, on edmudns future car forum awhile ago, and it looked similar to this, and was supposed the 3 door, FWD sporty car Kia has been rumored to have by 2009.
This Should be made into a Scion tC competitor, make it say compact sized(like the new Lancer coming out), drop in the Optima I-4 of 161HP, 5 speed automanual, and sell it for 18-19K.
Noooooo….. they build more CUV/SUV’s?
(after seeing tC’s nearly 80,000 units sold last year)….whatever.

that’s just fun to say.

Kohler doing cars now??