UK Motor Show part 2

In an increasingly design-savvy car market, ignoring the importance of brand identity is no longer an option. Every car maker, from specialist supercar builders to mass market value brands, know they need to have a coherent design approach, a visual identity that unites their products, expresses their values and gives their cars the kind of curb appeal that ensures they’re recognisable at a glance.

So what do you do if your brand has no known design language? Kia Motors don’t exactly conjure up visions of exotic vehicles or even superlative city cars, a legacy of the South Korean company’s relatively brief presence in Western markets. In order to bolster their non-existent image, Kia hired Peter Schreyer in 2006. The German born designer had spent almost his entire professional life at Audi, where he rose up the ranks to oversee the marque’s evolution into the epitome of calm, functional modernism, effectively bringing the language of architecture and product design into the styling studio and shifting the perception of the car industry.

Kia clearly hopes that Schreyer can work a similar magic. As South Korea’s oldest car maker, the company has the history but not the heritage, making up for what it lacks in image through value engineering that effectively undercuts almost everyone else on the market. Since he arrived, Schreyer has penned several concept cars, using exaggerated form language as a means of seeking out a signature style for the Kia range. The first fruits of his labours should start hitting showrooms in 2009 with the SOUL compact SUV.

What attracted you to Kia?
It’s a clean sheet of paper - it’s a very unrecognised brand, somehow, and there’s also a lot to do.

What do the concept cars say about Kia design?
We can’t be a premium brand, but I think what we need is a halo product. The excee’d convertible study [based on the standard pro_cee’d hatchback] is one option, but it’s not so easy to do a convertible after a model has been designed. It would fit very well - in the future it would work.

And the Kia Kee coupé? Will that be built
This car gave us some freedom to find out about our design language. We’ve decided to put this front grille on all our production cars in the future - you’ll recognise a Kia wherever you are. Certain design elements like the orange lighting on the instrument panel will also be carried over. Right now there is no heritage. Kia might be the oldest car company in Korea, but in terms of design language as Europeans understand, there’s nothing.

Tell us about the SOUL concept project.
These three concepts were an attempt at getting the feeling of a show car into a production model. They were started in our Californian studio a year ago when I suggested that we make three very different characters for the car [the forthcoming SOUL SUV]. It became a worldwide project, because all our studios worked on it. The SOUL Diva illustrated the trend for characterful cars, the SEARCHER was the quiet one and the BURNER loud and challenging. We can allow ourselves to be a bit cheeky and a bit different - we need to be creative. There is no point in trying to be ‘Korean.’ Design has evolved.