KIA records 10-year dramatic market turnaround  

Peter Schreyer, chief designer of KIA vehicles and CEO of the Korean enterprising brand is marking ten years of leading new car design for Kia, a period during which the Korean brand’s global sales have risen from around 1.1 million cars in 2005, to 3.05 million in 2015.

Over the last decade, Peter Schreyer has been the mastermind of Kia’s design revolution over the, a shift which has fundamentally altered the way in which the company’s models are perceived around the world. Having joined Kia Motors in 2006 as chief design Officer, Peter Schreyer is now president and chief design officer of Kia Motors Corporation (KMC).

And in establishing the brand’s new image, Kia had been making improvements for a number of years up to 2006, the year in which Peter Schreyer joined the business as chief design officer, followed with the introduction of the new European-built Cee’d and its unique 7-Year, 150,000 km warranty to Europe in the same year, and expanded its global manufacturing capabilities as new models entered production.

Followig  Peter Schreyer’s fresh design viewpoint in the past 10 years, it has provided the impetus for the transformation of the brand and its image customers around the world most of whom were opening their eyes to the value and quality of Kia cars that is increasingly matching global outlook.

Taking a retrospective look at the unfolding events, Peter Schreyer explains: “When I started at Kia, it was important that we established an identity and a consistent feeling across the brand. But the story of how our new vehicles came to life is about so much more than justaesthetics.

‘’It involves intricate choices in how complex ideas work together to create something that generates an emotional response. In the following years, this vision resulted in the establishment of a consistent design DNA across the growing Kia model line-up, with recognizable signature elements featured in a number of new designs.’’  He asserted.

Peter Schreyer’s direction has helped Kia establish a clear identity, raise brand awareness, and put into production a series of modern, progressive new car designs.

It is also instructive to state here that as Kia has transformed its model range, the proliferation of Korean culture around the world which looks like K-Pop, ‘Gangnam Style’, modern architecture in Kia’s own Korean domestic market, and the appreciation of Korean art, to name a few has helped inspire Schreyer and his design teams.

Peter Schreyer stressed that for designers, it is important to not only look at cars, but to be interested in architecture, art, music, industrial design and all sorts of things. They are influencing us and we are influencing them. People now know more about Korea, and about what’s going on there.

‘’You have this ‘heartbeat’ when you go to Seoul, and on the other hand, you have the silence, the concentration. Both of these things inspire me and our designers. It is this contrast that has inspired the design language of Kia’s models’’.

In changing perceptions of the Kia brand, it began with the 2010 Kia Optima, one of the first Kia models to be designed entirely under the direction of Peter Schreyer, seen today as the catalyst for the recent design-led transformation of Kia’s product range.

In its effort to offer new technology and greater refinement than its predecessors, the Optima’s design added depth to the Kia model line-up and fundamentally changed the way people saw the Kia brand in markets all around the globe.

The newest generation Optima, launched earlier this year, also retains this unique personality. In addition to the Optima, and every production model since, Peter Schreyer has also directed the creation of a number of design concepts, exploring and pushing the boundaries of Kia’s design capabilities.