Things are really heating up for the Korean automakers. Besides a huge boost in popularity, they’re bolstered by the fact that they have quite a team working for them.
For example, the lead designers for Hyundai and Kia are former German heavyweights, Luc Donkerwolke and Peter Schreyer on their design team, while the former chief engineer of BMW M, Albert Biermann, is in the handling and performance department.
And recently, Hyundai just launched their first sub-brand, the Genesis luxury nameplate, as the company’s foray into competing with the current top dogs of mass market luxury.
But long before all of this, Hyundai was reportedly working on a new entry-level luxury sports sedan to compete against the likes of the BMW 3-Series, the Audi A4, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Cadillac ATS, and more recently, the Alfa Romeo Giulia and Jaguar XE. It’s intended to be launched under the Genesis brand.
Now however, Kia it seems wants to go to war with its own stablemate and produce its own BMW 3-Series competitor with rear-wheel drive.
The news comes in from Reuters, who reportedly received the scoop on the new Kia, which could be seen as early as May 2017 in terms of production.
It’ll be offered with a choice of three engines, ranging from 2.0-, 2.2-, 3.0L, indicating the choices of possibly a range of four-bangers plus a V6.
All in all, this production BMW 3-Series competitor could be the result of past rumors of Kia wanting to produce a production version of the GT Concept from a few years back.
Needless to say, they have the team to make this happen, and it’ll be very interesting to see what Kia and Hyundai come up with in the coming years.
– By: Chris Chin
Source: Reuters
Source: egmCarTech http://bit.ly/20sqyvo
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