Staying alive: Kia Stinger will not be axed – yet

Reports from South Korea alleging the Kia Stinger sports sedan would be axed midway through 2022 are premature.

That’s the word from Kia Australia’s top brass, who’ve told carsales that production of the Stinger will continue beyond this year.

“We’ve committed to some long-term police contracts,” said Kia Australia’s chief operating officer, Damien Meredith.

“At the moment we’ve not had any official notification from headquarters about Stinger [being axed]. What we do is we keep placing the orders and it’s business as usual.”

Priced between $50,250 and $63,960 plus on-road costs, the Stinger has been popular with police forces following the demise of the locally-built Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon.

Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory are among the jurisdictions to have taken on the Kia sports sedan for police duties.

Meredith also said the Stinger remained a key product in the brand’s portfolio and that the large sedan had improved Kia’s reputation in Australia, thanks largely to credibility brought with its beefy 3.3-litre twin-turbo V6 (274kW/510Nm) and rear-drive layout.

“It’s been amazing for us in regards to branding, it’s given us credentials we’ve never had before,” he said.

“In regards to what’s occurring in the marketplace now, we’re doing quite well with Stinger. We’re holding lots of retail orders – private buyer orders – and we’re certainly holding lots of government orders in regards to [police] fleets.”

Korean news reports suggested the Sohari car plant in Gwangmyeong would cease building the Stinger as it tooled up to build new electrified cars, and that this married with Kia’s aggressive new global EV product assault set to deliver seven all-new electric cars by 2027.

But Roland Rivero, Kia Australia’s general manager of product planning, said reports of the Stinger’s demise in 2022 were premature.

“All those Korean car blog reports have said it’s going to end in quarter two this year. I can tell you, hand on heart, it’s not going to end in quarter two,” he said.

“That was speculation. People are free to speculate.”

Quizzed over whether production would end this year, Rivero responded: “I don’t believe it will.”

That said, Meredith admitted that a second-generation Stinger was unlikely.

“It’s probably not necessary in regards to what’s occurring with electrification and performance, because the transfer of a halo car could easily go from Stinger to EV6,” he said.

“From a product and marketing point of view that transition would be quite simple.

“Stinger’s done a great job for us as our hero performance car, and it has contributed to the growth of the brand, but now it’s not a case of just one car that has to do that now.

“It’s passed on the responsibility to everything else.”