.png "Menu")
Kia is still tuning the Stinger for us loud-loving Americans
Kia's hotly awaited Stinger five-door grand tourer is poised to hit US dealers around Thanksgiving, yet the Korean car company is still making tweaks to get the upscale five-door sports tourer right for US buyers. Eleventh-hour changes include finding a beefier exhaust note and cultivating a richer sound from the stereo system to better suit American ears.
The company's initial hope was to develop a global exhaust tune, but according to Orth Hedrick, vice president of product planning at Kia Motors America, the resulting tone wasn't throaty enough for a US performance car: "It sounded like a hissing note, like a restriction, something from the seventies." Hedrick told me that's in part because Europe has much tougher pass-by noise regulations, and because "as a general rule, Korean consumers don't appreciate loud exhausts -- because they consider it [to be] a bad muffler, [that] someone's not taking care of their car. It's not refined." As decades of muscle cars and sports coupes readily illustrate, US buyers prefer that their performance cars offer a bit more bark to go with their bite.
To make that happen, Kia Motors America had to urge the home office in Seoul to develop a richer exhaust note, a change that involves moving baffles within the muffler to yield less restriction. The change was so important to Hedrick that the company air-shipped 18 exhaust systems to be fitted to US media press preview vehicles, and then spent a week fitting them to the cars. At the vehicle's Los Angeles media launch this week, Hedrick assured me that even the first customer cars will be fitted with the throatier hardware.
To my ears, the resulting exhaust sounds good but could still go further, and company officials know this. "It's like 38 percent of what I would like," says James Bell, director of corporate communications. Bell, who was integral in pushing for a more vocal engine, notes that Kia is already seeding the car in the aftermarket with companies like Borla, a well-regarded performance exhaust company. When asked if Kia might make an even burlier Borla exhaust available through dealers, Hedrick said, "We're looking at that... it's a lot more doable if it's after the cat[alytic converter]."
Kia expects to show off a number of Stingers at the SEMA Show this fall in Las Vegas, and a Borla-tuned model will be among them. It's also likely that an even more vocal exhaust system will be factory-fitted eventually, too, but don't look for one in the Stinger's first year of production.
The same "boomier is better" American preference holds true for audio systems, too. As Hedrick notes, "the Korean market has a different aesthetic for what they want to hear for sound. They don't appreciate boomy bass; that loud, full bass that we appreciate -- that kind of full resonance that fills the cabin that you can feel."
Bell, who considers himself "a bit of a closet audiophile," had spent a lot of time in a preproduction Stinger and felt that despite the optional Harman Kardon audio system's comprehensive specs, the listening experience lacked low-end oomph. "With a lot of push and a lot of shove, we were able to get them [headquarters] to reconsider it," says Bell. Reworking the audio system for more bass didn't require new hardware, just software, so a special EQ tuning session was held recently in Michigan to address the issue for US models.
Changes to the Stinger haven't just been limited to audible matters. When the car was first revealed at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show in January, a 0-to-60 mph time of 5.1 seconds was announced for the twin-turbo V6 GT model. The production model will do it in 4.7. As Bell notes, "It was my job to go out there and say '5.1,' and every time I said it, I was like, '5.1 -- can't we pull two-tenths of a second out of it?'" Bell and Hedrick showed company officials back in Seoul acceleration data from other automakers who had similar vehicles, and over a summer of tuning, the engineers working on performance managed to find four-tenths. Now, the Stinger GT isn't just quicker than much-costlier cars like the base Porsche Panamera (0-60 in 5.4 seconds), it beats the BMW 440i Gran Coupe's 4.9 seconds, too.
0 comments: