Kia Stinger Carbon Edition revealed
With a raft of fast-looking parts, the Carbon Edition is on sale in Australia for $4000 more than the standard Stinger GT.
Kia Australia has revealed the Stinger Carbon Edition, a limited-run version of its range-topping liftback featuring a smattering of real carbon-fibre parts.
The lightweight weave has been used for the grille surround, bonnet vent-style inserts, side vents, wing mirrors, and rear diffuser-style insert, and contrasts with Neon Orange exterior paint in the car pictured here.
Inside, the steering wheel is trimmed in Alcantara but there's no extra carbon-fibre. Kia does offer a carbon-look finish for the transmission tunnel on the regular model, should buyers want to keep the theme rolling.
Priced from $67,990 drive-away, the Carbon Edition is $4000 more expensive than the range-topping Stinger GT on which it's based.
That means it's powered by a 3.3-litre turbocharged V6 engine making 272kW of power and 510Nm of torque. It's mated with an eight-speed torque converter automatic sending power exclusively to the rear wheels.
Since its local launch, the Stinger has found favour with the police forces of Australia.
Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia have all added the big liftback to their fleets as a replacement for large, locally-made sedans, while Kia Australia has teamed up with Fujitsu to develop integrated technology designed to make life easier for police.
On the sales charts, however, it's down 7.4 per cent year to date. It trails the Holden Commodore in the large car segment, but has comfortably outsold the Skoda Superb, which has actually grown its sales 10 per cent throughout 2019.
Despite its work as an image-builder, Kia head office appears undecided on whether it'll develop a second-generation model.
“At the moment I’m not sure it’s doing as good as we hoped," Gregory Guillaume, vice president and senior chief designer of Kia’s styling studio in Germany, told Australian media in Frankfurt.
“We never really expected to do massive volumes," he went on.
“It was a halo car. We did want to be successful at least in America, the market where we thought there is a chance that it works. We had very high expectations for that market and it’s very difficult to start in such segments.”
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