Optima gets Ozzified

Kia's new mid-sized sedan has been cornered -- repeatedly -- as a local engineering team ironed out its ride and handling
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A Malaysian journalist during the launch presentation for Kia's Optima sedan asked for an explanation: What was the difference between the locally-developed suspension underpinning the Aussie-spec Optima and Optimas sold elsewhere in the world?

Kia's Senior Product Manager, Nick Reid, took on the task of summarising the changes for the journalist -- and the Australian media also attending.

"At the moment there's about three or four different [suspension] tunes for the world," he said. "There'll be another tune coming along soon when the UK and the rest of Europe finalise their specification.

"If you compared ours with say the Korean domestic market, we run quite a lot of extra spring rate in the car -- torsional stiffness -- so we have considerably larger sway bars, different front springs and we've tuned our own shock absorber.

"The reason why we've done that is because when we upped the spring rate, we needed to find some ride comfort -- and we've done that through tuning the shock absorber."

Earlier in the evening, Reid had ushered the media through the dynamic changes for the locally-delivered Optima suspension -- in detail.

"In conjunction with Kia Australia's ride and handling partners, Gambold Testing Services, development started by reviewing all the global components, including the US and domestic (Korean) market settings. The Kia team quickly learnt that the key area we needed to focus on was shock absorber tuning.

"The shock absorbers on the Optima are Sachs High Performance Dampers -- or HPD. The HPD features a floating valve, which is designed to improve ride comfort while not compromising handling. We spent the majority of the time searching for a balance between the two valves. To fine-tune the dampers we called on Sachs directly for assistance and we were lucky to get the full support of Sachs with a senior engineer sent to Australia..."

The floating valve in the German-designed dampers allows some additional articulation over smaller bumps, such as expansion joints in bridges, for example. This improved secondary ride quality comes without significant detriment to the car's roll centre.

As well as the dampers, the local development staff looked at spring rates and anti-roll bar settings.

"The final roll stiffness was increased by 55 per cent in the front, 110 per cent in the rear," said Reid.

Even the power steering calibration has been adjusted to suit the Aussie driving environment.

"The new unique tune has seen assistance reduced by 10 per cent at parking and 20 per cent on centre, "said Reid. "This added weight has provided improved steering feel and vehicle control, increasing feedback during out-of-town motoring."

Graeme Gambold subsequently told the Carsales Network that his team and Kia Australia had aimed to set the Optima up with a suspension system that would be firmer than the sort of boulevard ride American-spec cars boast. At the same time, the local development team wanted a suspension tune that would absorb harder impacts from our parlous road surfaces. As mentioned by Reid, the Sachs dampers not only control spring rebound, they also take care of lower amplitude impacts from the road and thus ensure reasonable ride comfort without detracting from the handling and roadholding.

Steve Watt, Kia's National Marketing Manager, also revealed that the Australian team had taken the lead on sorting the suspension of the Kia. The work done here is expected to find its way into European and UK Optimas also -- just as the UK development team was the primary on the development of the Sportage's suspension for Australia and New Zealand. According to Watt, the Brits had started work on the Sportage before us, but the Aussie team had the headstart on the Optima project.

Kia allowing different regions around the globe the latitude to tailor the suspension to suit the local road environment and culture will inevitably pay dividends. A car company doesn't have to develop an entirely indigenous design to meet 95 per cent of a buyer's needs in an export market. How long before other car companies around the world work that out?

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