Kia winners go behind the scenes

But a group of luck Kia owners were recently allowed to visit their car's birthplace -- and get an insider's view of production.

Kia ran a competition on Facebook that had 50 Kia owners from around the globe headed to the home of the brand - South Korea. The group enjoyed a tour of the Hwaseong Plant and Kia's head office, the steel-making side of the business -- and some South Korean food and culture.

Among the lucky winners was Leanne Moore, 47, from Moorooka in Queensland, who has just bought her second Kia and was already a huge fan of the brand. And then an even bigger fan when she got the news of her prize. "I've had a Carnival and recently traded it in for a Sorento," she said. "I won the Facebook competition after I had the Sorento serviced. I didn't believe it when they rang to tell me I'd won," she says.

Ms Moore says Kia hosted four busloads of winners from North America, South America and Russia, as well as the Australians. And they all got a good look behind the scenes of carmaking. "The factory tour was amazing," she says. "I was surprised how everything runs so smoothly, and how enormous it is -- both the size of the factory and the number of cars they produce.

"The steelmaking plant was incredible ... it was like a whole big city with apartment blocks and transport systems for the workers." Ms Moore says she had never given any thought to the processes that landed a car in her garage. "I picked my car because I liked the look of it and liked it when I drove it, but I never thought too much about what goes into building a car," she says.

"Going through the factory you get a picture of the huge effort that goes into each car. We really got a behind the scenes look -- I suppose we got to see where our car was born." Kia Australia national service manager Darren Carver says the Hwaseong Plant the group toured builds around 2500 cars per day -- including Cerato, Optima and Sorento.

"We got some excellent feedback from the customers, the Korean people really look after you when you go over there," he says. "They went to the steel pressing plant, then the bodyshop where the panels are welded together, then they followed right down the line to see the finished car," he says. Mr Carver says tours of this nature for owners are rare, as this sort of event is normally restricted to dealers for the brand and automotive media.

"This is not something customers get to do very often, dealers, media and fleet customers do but the public don't - it's pretty rare. "We're pushing for it to be an annual event, it's not cheap but it's a good thing, the customers really enjoyed it," he says

The company's positive feedback is reflected in global brand value research, which had Kia debut at number 87 on the list of the Top 100 Best Global Brands study by Interbrand, the world's largest brand consultancy agency. Kia Australia chief operating officer Tony Barlow says Kia has emerged as a truly global brand. 

"We've been here for about 15 years, the last third has seen the most exciting changes have occurred - since Sportage it has been a humbling experience to see how well-received Kia has been with customers, voting with their purchases," he says. Globally, the company continues to beat its own sales records - global figures for September 2012 totalled 246,733 units, a year-on-year increase of 13.3 per cent.

For the first nine months of this year, Kia's global sales have increased by 11.3 per cent year-on-year to reach 2,034,787 units. The Australian arm of the company has more than doubled that improvement so far this year - 23,456 Kias were sold to the end of September, up by 4431 vehicles, a 23.3 per cent increase.