KIA unveils some of its performance plans

KIA’s performance development boss Albert Biermann divulges the company’s intentions and hints that more aggressive cars are on the way

We’ve seen Hyundai’s N-Division progress nicely with the i30 doing the quintessential hot hatch testing around the Nurburgring but sister Korean brand KIA has its own performance agenda without the fancy sub-brand.

Former BMW engineer Albert Biermann who now plies his trade over at KIA spoke recently about his views on the ProCeed GT to autocar. The Ceed GT is a very balanced car but we are a few years further down the road, and if we were to engineer it now it would have some more spice to it.”

So what would a racy KIA brand look like? In the executive sedan market, the new Optima is available, in Europe, with a 180kW 2.0-litre turbo petrol and the small hatch market dominated by Fiesta ST and Volkswagen Polo GTi could see a KIA rival based on the Rio platform.

These might not be outright track focused, fire-breathing models but they will add some sting to match the KIA’s slick styling. KIA is meant to be more emotional than Hyundai and we have to make cars that reflect that when you drive them,” Biermann said. “Hyundai is the quieter brand, that’s why the N-Division was created, because the brand cannot stretch as far. KIA can stretch much further, and I think we will be able to do more aggressive cars.”

“Things happen so quickly here, it’s all about acting and getting things done, not just having meetings and talking,” he said, “I took three powertrain guys out in the Optima GT prototype last summer and told them what I liked and what I didn’t, they were writing notes the whole time. The automatic gearbox wasn’t very good, the implementation – it was slow, you could downshift before a corner and it wouldn’t give you the gear in time. Six weeks later they showed by a new iteration and it was so much better, it was like a different car, and they still wanted to know what I thought, they still wanted to make it better.”