You may have heard that Korean manufacturer Kia is extending its unique seven-year warranty to all the cars in its model line-up.
Previously the seven year warranty was only available on Kia’s European-built products such as cee’d and Sportage, but will now apply to every vehicle in the Kia range from the Picanto city car to the top of the range Sorento.
The new “7-Year Kia Warranty” will apply to all vehicles sold and registered in more than 20 European countries after 1 January 2010.
Michael Cole, Managing Director of Kia Motors (UK) Ltd., explained: “The warranty covers every vehicle in our line-up for up to seven years – and no-one in the business can boast that. Even better, the warranty is transferable to subsequent owners bringing a big boost for used values”.
“We have already declared our intention to become the world’s No1 car maker for customer satisfaction and our new 7-Year Kia Warranty on all models is a major step towards achieving that goal.” Paul Philpott, Chief Operating Officer, Kia Motors Europe.
He is of course right when he says that no other manufacturer can make the same claims and, clearly hoping to carry on the momentum gained from the scrappage scheme, Kia have come out with all guns blazing and a full seven year warranty across the range is certainly a headline grabber. It’s also a very good piece of marketing.
What Kia are showing their existing and potential customers is their complete faith in their product, which will undoubtedly be reassuring to any prospective buyer especially so given the recent spate of recalls in the news.
From a purely practical point of view, with cars becoming ever more technologically advanced, it’s good to know that potentially expensive faults later in the cars life won’t cost you.
In our opinion it’s great to see a manufacturer display such great faith in their product and in the challenging times ahead this gives Kia a distinct advantage in a very competitive marketplace.
Follow this link to see Kia’s comparative manufacturers table.
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- Kia Motors’ 2009 global sales up 20.1% (newstatesman.com)
