As the economy has wobbled in recent years, many automakers have had to reevaluate their motorsports efforts, with several withdrawing their sponsorship from various forms of racing, citing the costs involved. Even those who are continuing their involvement have been closely scrutinizing the consumer benefit of racing research and development. But in 2010, Kia turned upstream by launching its first-ever motorsports effort, sending a pair of Forte Koups to campaign in the Street Tuner class of the Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge.
The team, run by Kinetic Motorsports, went through an expected teething period in the 2010 season, with a great many lessons learned. But after some fine tuning and significant engine improvements during the off-season, the Koupes came out swinging in 2011. After standing on the podium for the first time with a second-place finish at the Grand-Am 200 at Daytona this past January, the team took its first-ever victory last weekend at Barber Motorsports Park.
As the brand launches its sport-inspired SX trim on four models—Forte, Optima, Sportage, and Sorento—we wondered if Kia had plans to offer any sort of factory performance parts. The Forte in particular offers a very competent chassis to build on, as evidenced by the race car’s success. Kia acknowledges that it’s an untapped market, and there are those within the company who have hopes that avenue could one day be explored. “The biggest challenge is making the business case with the home office,” says Michael Sprage, vice president of marketing and communications at Kia Motors America. The motorsports venture is just as new to the brass in Korea as it is to Kia America, but its popularity among the execs is growing quickly. Having a winning race team makes that proposition much easier and, hopefully, we’ll see some factory go-fast goodies sooner than later.
No comments:
Post a Comment