KIA CHANGES TAKE DEALERS BY SURPRISE

Len Hunt (left) and Ian Beavis (right)

February 11, 2008—Kia dealers got some major news at their make meeting yesterday. Kia’s sales vice president, Tom Loveless, told attendees that CEO Len Hunt and vice president of marketing Ian Beavis had left the company, according to NADA Kia representative Larry Brown, who ran the meeting. Beavis, who was let go Friday, has been temporarily replaced by Tim Chaney, who has served as director of marketing communications, sources say.

Brown, a Kia dealer from Ottawa, Ill., says Loveless was responding to a question by a dealer who had heard a rumor about the executives leaving. Loveless used the word “resigned” regarding Hunt’s departure.

No reason was given for Hunt and Beavis’s joint departure. Company officials did not return calls.

The move comes a few days after former Kia Motors America president and CEO Byung Mo Ahn was named to the newly created position of chairman and group CEO of Kia Motors America and Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia, the automotive plant currently under construction in West Point, Ga. Ahn will now assume Hunt’s duties, according to sources.

Brown says that attendees of the recent dealer meeting were very upbeat, and that there was no sense of unhappiness. “Everyone was caught completely off-guard [regarding Hunt and Beavis].”