By Peter M. De Lorenzo
Detroit. There’s a refreshingly insane quality about the car business that suggests that anything is possible, and it has been around since people first started tinkering with the idea of creating a horseless carriage. The “What Ifs?” and “Why nots?” that propelled the automobile in its infancy have driven it to great heights and made legends of the people who brandished ideas like swords in the cut and thrust early days that would define the car business for many decades to come.
Invention, innovation and invariably a headstrong willingness to do things other couldn’t and go where no one else had dared to go before were part and parcel of the mindset of the great achievers who would push and cajole and flat-out will their way to success.
There was very definitely a Wild West feel to the early days of the automobile business, with the creative inventors and innovators perpetually squaring off against the money men in a monumental push and pull that would propel some to greatness and doom others to the dustbin of automotive history, relegated to being footnotes and cautionary tales as the churn of progress left them behind.
Needless to say, this business has never been for the faint of heart.
Today, this automobile business bears little resemblance to those wild early days. Yes, there are still passionate True Believers who bring forth visionary ideas and fight against the status quo and such, but much of that sense of urgency and newness and wonderment that marked the early days is gone today, replaced by corporate monoliths who have turned this business into a coldly calculated enterprise, a matter of ginning up the right ingredients at the right time to guarantee success that can be predicted and planned on and dutifully reported to stockholders in a cynical dance that seems to go on indefinitely.
That’s why I celebrate the brief flashes of brilliance I stumble upon on occasion in this business. That’s why I praise the True Believers who are not content to show up and shut up, but who bring a willingness to push for the extra bit of greatness, or that extra measure of precision and performance, and who aren’t willing to settle because that just wouldn’t do.
And whenever I see it in design, or engineering, or in a particularly noteworthy motorsports endeavor and even occasionally in marketing, somehow, some way, I retain a measure of optimism for this business that years of mind-numbing mediocrity can’t put asunder.
That there are still enough flashes of brilliance in this business to punctuate the darkness brought on by the cynical, carpetbagging minions and glorified drones who populate the management super structures of these corporate monoliths is simply amazing to me. But then again, lest we forget, this is the car business and there are always emphatic counterpoints to those occasional flashes of brilliance and episodes of unfettered passion that achieve greatness against all odds.
There are always people involved in the various enterprises who are unburdened with perspective and who seem to think kicking the decision down the road is a worthy pursuit, or worse, that impeding progress out of fear of reprisal or failure is a perfectly acceptable way to conduct themselves.
There are even whole car companies that knowingly function on a steady IV drip of a particularly corrosive and lethal cocktail comprised of two parts arrogance and one part delusion that clouds their thinking and mucks up their judgment to the extent that it leaves you shaking your head, with mouth agape in wonderment as to just how crazy it all sounds.
And Kia is just that company. Last week Kia operatives showed up in Detroit with the specific agenda to convince the assembled automotive media in this town that they: 1. Have it goin’ on. And 2. They will conquer the luxury market in no time with their unbeatable combination of knowledge and car building, with incredible insights into the consumer mindset thrown in for good measure.
The key to Kia’s Quixotic Quest is the K900 sedan, a car that seemed to have potential once upon a time - oh, for like five minutes - but that in the flesh is decidedly ordinary, a mishmash of ingredients thrown together as if to say, “See, we can do it too! As good as everyone else in fact!” But in fact, it’s not. The K900 is like going to the electronics store in search of the latest and greatest innovation in televisions and settling for an off-brand because it was cheaper and, if you squinted a lot, it kinda-sorta looked as good as the real thing.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, to say the least, but when Lee Soon-nam, Kia’s overseas marketing guru, tells Automotive News in an interview that Kia “… can reach mainstream and then, in another five years, we should be leader in the market” - on par with Toyota and VW by 2018, in case you’re wondering what he’s talking about - these guys deserve to take some serious shots.
I get the fact that Kia is obsessed to get out from under their onerous (to them) relationship-by-holding-company status with Hyundai, but throwing down insane predictions for success, like they can turn on a giant spigot and world-beater Kias will come running out is not only flat-out delusional, but a particularly shocking brand of arrogance cum insanity that the Korean car companies seem to specialize in, one that pretty much defies having at least a shred of rational thinking attached to it.
I could go on with more of Soon-nam’s blathering, but why bother? These guys are slurping from that aforementioned company cocktail at a prodigious rate.
And their U.S. operatives seem to be embracing the internal delusion with great gusto as well. Michael Sprague, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Kia Motors America told the press here in Detroit that, "We've positioned the vehicle in what we define as the sweet spot… between the mid-luxury space and premium-luxury space. If you think of the BMW 5 series versus the BMW 7 series, we're kind of right in the middle."
Sure you are, Michael. But he didn’t stop there, oh no. Then he said that the K900 was aimed at “confident individualists,” mumbling something about brands not defining these buyers and that they don’t have to showcase their wealth.
What a bunch of unmitigated bullshit.
Here’s a tip, Michael, why don’t you say that the K900 is aimed at people who don’t want to look all that hard and who don’t know the difference anyway? Then you might be on to something.
Kia is a middling value brand based on price. Period. And that new-fangled K900 that is allegedly going to be a world beater? They’re already pushing $299/month leases in national advertising. So how is that working out for ‘em?
Yes, this business has a rich history of magnificent inventors and innovators, and some beautiful dreamers too. Some soared and some failed, but even those who failed did it with a modicum of dignity and style that added to the lore of what makes the car industry so damn fascinating.
But Kia? It’s akin to a knockoff factory cynically churning out cars that look like the real thing and are almost as good as the name brands for a lot less. Perhaps they should put their marketing in the hands of the street vendors of New York, at least then it might be more authentic.
And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.