Kia Carnival wins People's Choice Award in Australia

(SEOUL) December 20, 2007 -- Australia's most popular MPV, the Kia VQ Carnival range (known simply as 'Kia Carnival' or 'Kia Sedona' in many markets) has won the 2007 Carsales Network (Australia's largest automotive website) People's Choice Award in the People Mover category.

From 1 November 2006 to 31 October 2007, every time a Carsales Network user placed an enquiry on a new car, whether through carsales.com.au, carpoint.com.au or any of its affiliated websites, the enquiry counted as a vote in the 2007 Carsales Network People's Choice Awards.

Commenting on the 2007 People's Choice Awards, Carsales.com Managing Director and CEO, Greg Roebuck said, "During 2007, hundreds of thousands of new car enquiries were placed across Carsales Network websites. That means we can determine exactly which new car models Australian buyers are looking at purchasing, and in that way, the People's Choice Awards are truly a vote by Australian car shoppers on their favorite new vehicles.

"Winners are not chosen by journalists or car testers or manufacturers or industry bodies but by Australian car buyers themselves."

Bill Gillespie, Director Sales and Marketing at Kia Motors Australia, said, "We are very pleased that so many Australian new car buyers are considering the Kia Carnival or Grand Carnival for their next purchase.

"Carnival has consistently been Australia's best selling people-mover and when it comes to actually making a purchase, approximately 35% of buyers in the under-AU$55K people-mover market have chosen either the Kia VQ Carnival or Grand Carnival, demonstrating that Carnival really is the people's choice."

The Carnival is Kia's best-selling MPV in overseas markets so far in 2007, with 71,468 units sold through the month of November. In 2007, it has earned a five-star crash safety rating from the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and was selected by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) of the U.S. as one of only 34 vehicles to earn the "Top Safety Pick." The Carnival also received top honors in Strategic Vision's 2007 Total Quality IndexT (TQI) in the U.S.

Kia Motors Corporation (www.kia.com -- one of the fastest growing automakers in the world -- was founded in 1944 and is Korea's oldest manufacturer of motor vehicles. As part of the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group, Kia aims to become one of the world's premier automotive brands. Kia's 12 manufacturing and assembly operations in eight countries produce more than 1.3 million vehicles a year that are sold and serviced through a network of distributors and dealers covering 165 countries. Kia today has over 33,000 employees and annual revenues of almost $19 billion. It is the major sponsor of the Australian Tennis Open and an official worldwide sponsor of the Davis Cup. From 2007 to 2014, Kia will be an official automotive partner of FIFA -- the governing body of the FIFA World Cup -- as well as a EUROTOP partner of UEFA. Kia Motors Corporation's brand slogan -- "The Power to Surprise" -- represents the company's global commitment to surpassing customer expectations through continuous automotive innovation.