Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
How Kia got good
Taking on automotive giants
LINDSEY SCHUTTERS: WHEN I BOUGHT MY FIRST KIA Sorento, I was actually shopping for a good deal on something completely different. I knew I wanted a hardy 4x4 and sitting in it felt, for lack of a better term, solid. Ladderframe chassis, Borgwarner transfer case, Borgwarner turbochager, Bosch common rail direct injection system and Hyundai’s 2,5-litre D4CB diesel generator engine. The Sorento brought high quality components at a price undercutting all of its competitors at the time. Inside there was also automatic climate control, leather seats and cruise control. The only regret I ever had was getting a 2005 Sorento because Kia introduced its 10-year warranty from the 2006 model year. The only mechanical issues I had was a failed slave cylinder that the dealer replaced and then a costly blown fuel injector.
I had grand designs of joining the 4x4 enthusiast community and that platform was a great start, mostly because of the passionate following Kia had earned. A shame then, that the 2005 model year still saw the brand in 30th position on the JD Power Initial Quality Study (IQS), a fact that drivers of traditional market-leading SUVS wouldn’t hesitate to let me forget.
We downsized after that and when we needed more space again, the Kia Sorento was the first car on the list, mostly because of our previous excellent experience and partly because of the stellar service we get at Kia Helderberg. Now updated with the ‘tiger nose’ front, the 2010 model served as a design overhaul for Kia. Sorento is the flagship and therefore comes equipped with the latest technologies available at the time. This time, I also benefited from the 10-year warranty. There were, however, fundamental changes to the platform, which makes it unsuitable for serious off-road adventuring. The Hyundai 2,2 R common rail diesel engine is efficient and hasn’t served up any problems yet and the car as a package can go feature for feature with competitors up to around five years its junior.
Kia now ranks number one on the IQS survey, but the early stigma of blown Sportage engines, boring designs and poor value offerings still sticks. We’re itching to get something more modern (and more off-road capable) and the resale value of the Sorento isn’t the best. I’m actually looking to trade it on a well-priced newer model Kia, to be honest.
“FOR A KOREAN COMPANY TO SPEND $1 BILLION TO RESEARCH QUALITY, THIS WAS NEW .”
EZRA DYER: SCOTT UPHAM, CEO of Valient Market Research, has followed the Korean auto companies for decades and written studies to help their managers understand how to establish manufacturing in the US. “After Hyundai’s initial failures with its first wave of cars, they spent over a billion dollars researching how to improve quality,” he says. “This was new, for a Korean brand to make this high-level investment into quality. But it takes time to build up goodwill. They’ve had a tough row to hoe.”
Everyone at Kia, both at the Georgia factory and in Seoul, is aware of this, working hard to reverse those perceptions.
I remember driving the cars that informed that era of Kia. The mid2000s Amanti felt like a goggle-eyed Mercedes E-class rip-off. The Sedona was built with so much cast iron it weighed as much as a Tahoe. But change started in 2006. Kia hired designer Peter Schreyer away from Audi. It was a big poach – his résumé included the iconic Audi TT – and after he arrived, the cars started looking better. In 2009, the Soul became a surprise hit, and, across the whole company, IQS numbers and sales tracked up. In 2005, Kia’s market share was 1,62 per cent, rising to 3,53 per cent today. That growth is unprecedented in this industry, and partly the result of Schreyer’s mission to make Kias better looking. More specifically, to make them look different from Hyundais.
Ah yes, Hyundai. Back in 1998, Hyundai bought a bankrupt Kia, and now owns about a third of the company. For the cars bearing either name, think of them as siblings, but not twins. Within the parameters of shared engineering, Hyundai and Kia have fairly wide leeway to design and market their cars in different ways. Not every Kia has a Hyundai equivalent, and vice versa. There is no Kia version of the Hyundai Veloster, no Hyundai version of the Soul. I’d say Kia’s designs skew younger and sportier, in general, but maybe I’m just buying into that hip-hamster-based marketing. Besides introducing anthropomorphic hamsters, Kia has also gradually moved upmarket. Charging more for its cars, says Kia spokesman Neil Dunlop, reflects a deliberate distinction between cost and value: “It’s not about being at the bargain end of the pricing spectrum,” he says. That means modern Kias still tend to be somewhat less expensive than their competitors, but not always. Charging similar prices is part of Kia’s way of saying, We’re not so different from Lexus, you know.
This pricing tactic reflects a transformation beyond quality. On the factory floor, I wondered if there was a particular moment, a turning point when an executive in Korea pounded a fist on a conference table and issued a decree to beat Lexus in the IQS. It took a few weeks for Kia, writing from Korea, to issue a response stating that there had been such a decision: “Yes, over a decade ago, Hyundai Motor Group, which includes Kia, made a conscious and deliberate decision to concentrate on quality rather than volume.” It seems nobody there wants to take credit. But back in Georgia, Kia was totally willing to show me how it translated that unlikely goal – worst to first – into a reality.
West Point, like any car factory, is where theories and goals meet the harsh reality of large-scale manufacturing. This is where a thousand things can go wrong. Kia’s strategy is to catch them early. This plant has 39 codes just to flag paint defects (No. 14: “thin coat”; No. 39: “mottle”). And a panel only gets paint if it makes it past an earlier barrage of quality tests. “If even a single hair gets into a die,” says Ted Arnold, senior manager of quality assurance, “that can come out in the metal.” Thousands of tons of stamping force, and a hair can ruin everything.
Arnold is an industry veteran, having come from a Mercedes plant in Alabama. And even though there are 3 000 workers employed at West Point, he seems to know everyone –
at least, everyone on this day shift. The line runs 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday. When a shift changes, the incoming workers stand behind the ones who are about to punch out and seamlessly continue building cars. “A lot of people around here used to work in the textile industry,” Arnold says. “So there was already a skilled labour force that we could recruit.”
Every one of the plant’s employees spent at least 40 hours at the $22 million Kia Georgia Training Centre down the road, which houses welding, robotics, and electronics and quality-control labs. And more than two-thirds of those employees have flown to Korea for even more training.
Robots weld and stamp panels like in any modern car factory, but there’s a surprising amount of human artistry in a Sorento, Optima and Hyundai Santa Fe, the three models built here. Consider stoning, for instance. Workers hand-rub fine stones over every tenth door panel that comes through, searching for imperfections. “Any high points will show up bright silver, and low points will be darker,” Arnold says. If they find anything wrong, they rub the entire batch. And the batch that came before that. “We want to catch anything before it gets to paint, because here it’s easier to fix,” he says. I figured this is the sort of job that would be done by laser-eyed Terminator robots the world over. But Honda does this, too, at its plant in Marysville. For quality control, even on the scale of Hondas and Kias, human hands still play a
“I WONDERED IF THERE WAS A TURNING POINT, WHERE AN EXECUTIVE IN KOREA POUNDED A FIST ON A CONFERENCE TABLE .”
role in the business of smashing metal into shape.
After any flagged issues are fixed (my loaner Sorento had only one, resolved earlier on, noted as some kind of residue on one of the seats), the car gets 15 litres of gas, just enough to test it and move it around en route to the dealer. A diagnostic computer fires the car’s electric synapses while a worker sits behind the wheel pushing buttons on the dash, verifying all the connections. Front-seat coolers: check. The surround-view cameras are calibrated by driving the car into what looks like a Hollywood green-screen room, the Kia employee tapping targets on the dash touchscreen. The car gets an alignment, followed by a high-speed four-wheel dynamometer test to verify engine power and transmission function. Then, it’s outside for a lap around the test track, where a driver checks the antilock brakes, steering, acceleration, suspension, and even the brake’s hill-holder function. Back inside, the Sorento enters a leak-test chamber that looks like an exceptionally ferocious car wash.
But it’s the same question as the stoning: doesn’t everyone do this? No, not everyone. I’ve seen Mclaren dyno test each R2 millionplus supercar. But in Marysville, Honda only spot checks. Kia does this with every car.
Tour over, I climb into my Sorento, which has 13 miles on the odometer. I ask Arnold if I need to break it in, take it easy for a few hundred miles. He says there’s no particular break-in period. After all, they gunned it on the dyno test from the first moment the oil was warm. So as I turn onto the highway on-ramp, I floor it, summoning all 290 horses from the 3.3-litre V-6. It’s peppy, the Sorento
Bu But this design has been around a while. Introduced in 2011, it shows its age. The transmission has six gears instead of eight or nine. There’s no electronic lane keeping. And when I stop for fuel, there’s a plastic cap to unscrew. Little details remind you that the Sorento is due for an overhaul, but the car is otherwise a fundamentally pleasant companion. The interior is smartly designed – actual knobs for the stereo and HVAC – and quiet on the highway. The Sorento is competent and well made, a car that strives to soothe rather than excite. Kia now knows how to do the latter (see: Stinger) but that’s not the mission for midsize crossovers.
I would cover nearly 1 000 miles before Kia reclaimed the Sorento. Along the way, there were a thousand things that could have gone wrong. But nothing did. PM