No AWD or diesel Kia Stinger

There is little or no prospect of the all-wheel drive and turbo-diesel versions of Kia’s hotly-anticipated Stinger GT being sold in Australia.

Kia Motors Australia has instead elected to concentrate on turbo-petrol and rear-wheel drive versions of the five-door large car, offering three equipment grades with both the 2.0-litre and 3.3-litre V6 engines.

KMA communications chief Kevin Hepworth said the complexity of supporting that line-up was judged to be enough.

The company has had an unprecedented response to the Kia Stinger, which goes on sale around September 1 and is being touted as an affordable sports sedan to replace the soon-to-be-retired locally developed Holden Commodore.

Ironically, the imported version of the Holden Commodore sourced from Opel will come with all-wheel drive and a turbo-diesel, but no rear-wheel drive or a turbocharged V6 engine.

The 2.2-litre turbo-diesel four-cylinder makes 147kW and 440Nm and accelerates from 0-100km/h in 7.7sec. That compares to the 2.0-litre petrol’s 182kW/353Nm and 6.0sec and the V6’s 272kW/510Nm 4.9sec. The diesel uses the same Hyundai group eight-speed auto as the petrol engines.

The all-wheel drive system is rear-biased and trades in the rear-driver’s mechanical limited-slip diff for dynamic torque vectoring control. The AWD Kia Stinger GT impressed during launch drive at the Nurburgring last week.

“We are running six variations of the car on two engines and at the moment this is a shot in the dark because we have never sold a car like this before,” Hepworth told motoring.com.au.

“Every time you add a complexity to a car via another engine, another gearbox, even another colour, you multiply your costs on the car.

“So, if you are going to carry petrol, diesel, two-wheel drive, all-wheel drive and various spec levels you are running a very expensive exercise for which you need to have guaranteed a large number of sales.”

Model complexity also made delivering the right car to the right destination in a timely fashion more challenging and added to spare parts inventory costs, he said.

“We think the key car for this market will be the petrol vehicle and we will set specifications that our people will sell in Australia.”

Hepworth said you could “never say never” but there were no business plans for either all-wheel drive or diesel in Australia.

However, he conceded a higher-performance Kia Stinger GT with AWD would definitely be considered for Australia if it was developed, although there are no suggestions from the factory that such a car is planned.