Kia cee'd wins 5-Star Euro NCAP safety rating

(SEOUL) August 29, 2007 -- The all-new Kia cee'd family car has been awarded a 5-Star safety rating in the latest Euro NCAP crash test results published today. The cee'd safety ratings - 5-Stars for Adult Protection, 4-Stars for Child Protection and 2-Stars for Pedestrian Protection - place it among the C-segment's safest cars.

"The latest Euro NCAP result is a major landmark achievement for Kia. The cee'd is designed, engineered and built in Europe, to meet or surpass the expectations of European consumers in every respect - including safety," commented Yong-Hwan Kim, Senior Executive Vice President & COO, Kia Motors Corporation. "The combination of the car's many talents, plus the 5-Star safety rating and the unique Kia 7-Year warranty, will make the cee'd even more attractive to European consumers, offering real peace-of-mind and low ownership costs.

"Kia's safety engineers developed the new cee'd to provide the highest levels of occupant protection in real-world accident scenarios. Our engineers predicted that cee'd would achieve a Euro NCAP 5-Star rating and this result confirms the major advances made by Kia with its latest C-segment family car," added Mr. Kim.

The Kia cee'd five-door hatchback, which is equipped with six airbags (front, side and curtain airbags) as standard, achieved good or excellent points scores in the front impact, side impact and child protection Euro NCAP tests. All Kia cee'd cars are manufactured at Kia's new assembly plant at Zilina in Slovakia.

For cee'd, Kia engineers initially concentrated on ensuring that the car had high levels of 'active safety' with good visibility, responsive and agile handling, and powerful braking, to enable Kia drivers to avoid accidents and other everyday motoring hazards.

The cee'd family will be soon become complete, when the five door cee'd model will be complemented by the stylish cee'd wagon - in dealer showrooms from September, and the launch of the exciting new three-door pro_cee'd model at the Frankfurt Show.

According to Jean-Charles Lievens, Senior Vice President, Kia Motors Europe, "The cee'd is the first Kia product and the first Korean-brand car ever to be awarded the top rating by a European safety organisation. The introduction of the Kia cee'd has brought about a qualitative revolution for Kia, and together with our highly-productive factory in Slovakia, is beginning to change the way Kia is perceived by consumers. Most of the cee'd five-door buyers are new 'conquest' customers switching to the Kia brand for the first time and we expect the cee'd wagon and three-door pro_cee'd models will accelerate this trend."

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 8 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. Kia Motors Corporation's brand slogan -- "The Power to Surprise" -- represents the company's global commitment to surpassing customer expectations through continuous automotive innovation.