Kia Stinger safe from EV onslaught

The Kia Stinger arrived Down Under in 2017 – between the deaths of Australia’s two homegrown rear-drive six-cylinder icons, the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore – and it seems the Korean sports sedan will fill that void for a while yet.

Indeed reports of the Stinger’s demise by mid-2023 appear premature, with senior executives at Kia Australia pouring cold water on the latest round of conjecture from South Korea.

Late last month a report by Korean outlet Auto Times claimed production of the Kia Stinger will be axed next April and the model will replaced by a large electric sports sedan from around 2025.

But Kia Australia’s product planning boss, Roland Rivero, told carsales this was an unlikely scenario.

“I’d like to think just about every EV on our E-GMP [electric vehicle platform architecture] will be somewhat of a halo vehicle for us anyway,” he said.

“EV6 has done that for our brand and EV9 is yet to come – you can see numerous EVs from the silhouette [teaser image released in September 2020, when Kia promised to release seven new EVs by 2027]…

“But is there one car that’s going to be an absolute replacement? I don’t think so. We can definitely offer future products that have the same character and same driver enjoyment as current ICE models,” he said, dismissing the idea that the Stinger would morph into an EV.

Rumours have been swirling for several years around an early termination for the Kia Stinger largely due to the soft sales response from North American buyers. And while it appears unlikely Kia will produce a second-generation Stinger, rumours of the large rear-drive sedan’s axing little more than five years after its launch are unfounded, said Rivero.

“No one from HQ [in Seoul, Korea] has made any official announcements. It’s business as usual for the Kia Stinger.”

The Kia Stinger V6 bangs out a hale and hearty 274kW of power and 510Nm of torque and, while it never sold in the same numbers as big Australian-made sedans, it’s been a respectable earner for the Asian car-maker and has already survived at least one reported attempt on its life this year.

“From our perspective it’s fine for Korean media outlets to speculate, but we haven’t heard anything of that nature. We’ll keep selling it and it’s business as usual until we hear otherwise from our HQ,” Rivero told carsales.

The Kia exec also pointed out that the long-running contract to supply the Queensland Police Service with highway patrol cars would need to be torn up should production of the Kia Stinger be terminated.

“Queensland police has been told nothing about this vehicle being over and out,” said Rivero.

Thanks to its size and performance, there are currently Kia Stinger police cars in operation in Tasmania, West Australia and the Northern Territory, but the sedan continues to command a long waiting list of private buyers.

“We’ve still got lots of back-orders as well,” said the Kia product chief, explaining that supply issues continue to hinder its sales potential.

“We have good months and bad months mainly because we struggle with supply for the Lambda [V6 turbo-petrol] engine.”

The vast majority of Stinger sales in Australia are for V6 variants and so far in 2022 sales of the big sports sedan are up more than 50 per cent year on year, with 2054 buyers taking delivery to the end of the October.

“Whatever we get our hands on seems easy to offload,” added Rivero.

All-wheel drive versions of the Stinger are available overseas, but the four Kia Stinger variants sold in Australia are exclusively rear-drive, with four-cylinder prices starting at $51,250 for the base 200 S and V6 pricing opening at $64,960 for the GT.

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