While it might operate under the same umbrella organisation – Hyundai America Technical Centre Inc (HACTI) – as the California proving ground, Kia’s Design Center America (KDCA), adjacent to the brand’s national sales company in Irvine, California, has been happily divorced from its parent company’s design facility since 2008 and operates completely independently.
It’s part of a $130m, 21.7-acre campus opened alongside the 5 freeway in Orange County in 2008, designed by well known architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (John Hancock Center, Sears Tower, new One and Seven World Trade Centers, Burj Khalifa, etc).
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The 100,700 sq ft design centre was developed with input from the Kia Motors US design team – which previously operated from a facility shared with Hyundai (opened in Irvine in 2003) – to ensure an aesthetically pleasing and physically functional layout that encourages creativity. It consists of a design studio, a modeling studio that allows up to eight vehicle models to be worked on simultaneously, a milling shop that features a Zimmerman computerised milling machine, a 2-D presentation room, a colour and trim room, a wood/metal shop, a 3-D presentation room that features clearstory windows to allow for viewing indoors under natural light, a paint booth, a private outdoor viewing courtyard, a recreation room, a research library, four conference rooms and a secure, underground garage.
“By establishing the first Kia-exclusive US design centre in Irvine, we can take advantage of the tremendous design talent and inspiration provided by the Southern California car culture in a functional environment set up to maximise our designers’ abilities and creativity,” said the brand’s US chief designer Tom Kearns, as the facility opened. “KDCA will produce stylish, new vehicles that will impact the new design direction for Kia Motors worldwide.”
Fast forward six years and you have a studio that, as well as coming up with a number of stunning concept cars for motor shows, focuses about 80% of its efforts on production vehicles sold in the US.
According to design manager Eric Klimisch, billed by Kia’s local PRs as the ‘COO’ of KDCA, the centre designed “just about all except the Optima [the sedan built alongside the Sorento SUV at the automaker’s own US plant in Georgia] and the K900 [luxury V8 sedan]”.
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By GlobalDataThere are 33 permanent staff in the centre of which 20 are designers, plus a further dozen contractors.
Of course, the annoying thing about being shown around a design centre is that everything in the place is Top Secret so you can’t see very much of it, let alone sidle up to a designer and let him or her show you what he is working on, in clay or on-screen, and how the job is done. But we were shown a number of concept cars the centre has designed and gained some insight into how these are readied for show time.
A key show focus is Detroit – still the US biggie, despite what LA, Chicago and New York might think – and the concept process starts about a year out with the first decision – what type of vehicle? The design centre’s own show-and-tell ‘fleet’ – which are driveable – clearly shows they’ll have a crack at any segment or body style going. Sketches take about three weeks, decisions are made on those and then two to five small models are made for executive review. Eventually, it boils down to one and a full-size model is made, taking another month. Once that is finalised, the outside build shop is chosen and off the full-size clay model and digitised data go, to be transformed into a handcrafted ‘concept’.
“Twenty years ago we would build the models in-house but it’s a better use of resources to outsource now,” said Klimisch. He noted that concept building “always runs into problems” and, just as when engineering a design for production build, the centre “has to compromise the design a little”.
All the concepts are ‘drivers’, Klimisch revealed. “The vendor buys a car and uses what they can.” On Detroit show (January) timing, a clay normally would be ready by July and the finished concept released late in November leaving just enough time for photography before the vehicle must be shipped. Tyre suppliers sometimes provide specially customised tyres for the concepts but backup production types are usually kept on hand just in case.
Asked about the future, Kimisch said he was keen to see “what the next look is going to be, I’d like to see what we’ll be doing in 10 years’ time”. He doesn’t, however, see Kia’s now-familiar ‘tiger’ nose “changing anytime soon” as that has “sort of become our kidney grille”.
Kimisch said the design process does, that said, move fast and that the California studio enjoys lots of autonomy as part of guidelines laid down by group chief designer Peter Schreyer who gave Kia that distinctive nose.
Kimisch thinks the prospect of autonomous vehicle travel is “fascinating” and, in future “will affect everybody” but he thinks the issue of assignation of blame for accidents will hinder progress for a while.
As to electric vehicles and the like, should they look different? Kimisch thinks not but there “is the opportunity to do so” and he points to the blue enhancements on the Soul EV. “I think the EV customer wants a vehicle that looks unique and we try to accommodate that.”
He noted that nothing about the Tesla “screams EV and that some models are now becoming “so commonplace they don’t need tweaks like blue grilles”.
The concept he’s most proud of? “The Stinger – that was really satisfying to work on.”
Kimisch also noted with pride that Kia “takes good care of its concepts and keeps them around”. The three that greeted us on arrival and the several more we were shown in a special viewing room were proof of that.
