With Kia Selling 17,000 Stingers In The U.S. In 2018, Is It A Winner?

In its first full year on the US market, the Kia Stinger managed to find 16,806 customers, which sounds like a solid performance for a newcomer in the mid-sized car segment.

The problem is we can’t know for sure how good the Stinger’s performance really is, since its named competitors don’t provide a sales breakdown that will allow a direct comparison; BMW for example sold 31,379 4-Series models in 2018 but this includes both the two- and the four-door versions.

Similarly Audi announces a sales figure for the whole A5 lineup -25,972 units-, which includes the A5 Coupe and Sportback, as well as the Cabriolet and the S and RS variants. Lexus sold 22,927 IS models in 2018.

There are also rumors saying that buyers of the Kia Stinger heavily favored the twin-turbo V6 version over the more affordable 2.0-liter model. We’ve reached out to Kia for a comment and a sales breakdown but Kia has not replied yet.

With the market clearly showing its love to SUVs, the Kia Stinger appears to have succeded in its mission but we still can’t tell for sure, especially without more detailed sales data on our hands.

Overall, 2018 was a rather flat year for Kia Motors, managing to sell 589,673 units compared to 589,668 cars sold in 2017.

The year’s champions for the Korean brand include the Kia Sportage, which enjoyed its best-ever annual sales with 82,823 units, and the Kia Sorento with 107,846 units.The Forte, Optima and Soul models surpassed the 100,000-unit mark but saw their sales declining over last year’s results.