The first is to know how much your intended car is worth. This will need a little research into the costs of similar vehicles of the same year and in similar condition with similar mileages source from different kinds of outlets including private sellers and dealerships. If you are intending to trade in your current car, then similarly you will need to research its value. Any dealer will attempt to inflate the value of the car he is selling and deflate the value of the one you are trading in.

The second is to ask the dealer all the right questions. Even if the information appears in an advert, you should ask the salesman the car’s mileage, its level of equipment, whether it has been involved in an accident, if it has a full service record, how many previous owners and the general condition of the car both mechanically and visually.

The third involves how you finance the vehicle. If you are paying cash you can ignore this, but car finance comes in many shades. Generally the cheapest option is a bank loan and if you are pre-approved for one you will have the same negotiating power as if you are offering cash.

Remember to take you time and think with your head rather than with your heart. A common trick that salespeople use is to suggest to you that if you don’t buy it quickly then somebody else is interested in buying it. Call their bluff – if you are wrong there are many more pebbles on the beach (or cars in other forecourts).

Finally, even if the salesman says that the price is the price and cannot be negotiated, do not believe him. All prices are negotiable and always walk away rather than pay a price with which you are uncomfortable.

Last year, Kia made production records in Europe with 252,000 cars and more than 359,000 engines rolling off the assembly lines at is Zilina plant in Slovakia. Kia’s European arm built 10 percent more cars and posted a 12 percent increase in engine production.
Kia said that it is planning to further raise output in Slovakia, aiming to produce 285,000 vehicles this year, while the opening of a second engine shop in 2011 will allow the company to build as much as 450,000 engines annually.

Kia employs more than 3,900 people at Zilina with all vehicles exported to Europe and Russia. The company’s biggest markets in the region are Russia, which absorbed 23 percent of total production followed by Great Britain with 10 percent, Germany with 9 percent and Spain with 8 percent.

The soon-to-be replaced Cee’d series accounted for 41 percent of production at the Slovakian plant followed closely by the Sportage with 40 percent.

Hyundai Motor Group, the owner of Kia brand, announced that it will invest $12.2 billion this year in research and development as well as on improving its facilities. Hyundai announced last October that their target for 2012 was 7 million units, up from 6.5 million in 2011. They also estimate that their growth could have been even larger had it not been limited by their plants’ output, many of which are operating at or near their maximum capacity.

The company stated that almost US$4.4 billion are earmarked for its research department in order ‘to accelerate the development of eco-friendly and fuel-efficient vehicles’.

Hyundai and Kia are increasing their 2012 investment by 15.6 percent compared to 2011 in order to meet increased demand. Both carmakers have achieved record sales in the U.S. market, with dealers having just a 30-day supply of vehicles on December 1, which is the second lowest supply in the industry and less than half the industry average.

And he may be proven correct, as Kia has a strong new range of products and last month increased its US target for 2011. It also announced that it will begin producing the Optima at its US plant in Georgia from September.

The Kia Soul is a South Korea-produced compact, mini MPV launched at the 2008 Paris Motor Show. It has a bold and edgy design, and it comes with more styling and package combinations than any Kia vehicle created before. When it comes to its safety features, it’s apparently topnotch as it has been awarded by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) with 5 stars, which is the highest possible safety rating. Despite its size, it got an overall weighted score of 75%. Breaking down the crash test results, it was rated 87% for adult protection, 86% for child protection, 39% for pedestrian protection, and 86% for Safety Assist equipment.

A wide array of safety features have been incorporated into the Kia Soul’s compact design, such as advanced front and full-length side airbags, front seat active headrests, an anti-lock brake system with electronic brake-force distribution, electronic stability control, a tire pressure monitoring system, and rear disc brakes which are standard on all models with the exception of the Base trim. All these and the high-tensile strength steel and up-to-date safety technology used in the Kia Soul allowed the vehicle to be among the safest of B-segment family cards worldwide, and, following the European-built Kia cee’d, the second Kia vehicle to have received the highest possible safety rating from Euro NCAP.

Aside from the assurance that you have of the safety of the vehicle’s occupants when you drive it, you can benefit from the completeness of safety equipment in the Kia Soul when buying auto insurance for it. This applies for any other vehicle, for that matter. The higher a car’s safety rating, the cheaper it is to have it insured. Other factors that affect the premium are the buying price of the car itself and how cheap its repair parts will be in the case of an accident where the owner files a claim. Kia cars and their repair parts are not unreasonably priced and they are among the best in terms of safety and security equipment. Be a safe, infrequent, law-abiding driver of any one of them and you’ll be impressed at the discount you can get with your car insurance.

Crumbling pickup truck sales and rising gas prices have led Hyundai and its affiliate Kia to abandon their plans to build pick-up trucks in the U.S. “Because of high oil prices, the light-truck market has been declining,’” Kim Dong Jin, Vice Chairman of the Hyundai said today. “We don’t think it’s the right time.”

As for Kia’s new Georgia plant where Hyundai and Kia carmakers considered building their pickup trucks, the company now says that it will be used to produce the Sorento SUV.

Fiat sells cars with the software outside the U.S.

Kia Motors will be entitled to sell cars equipped with Microsoft Auto around the world starting in November, but the company is working on new capabilities and probably won’t be ready this fall, said Velle Kolde, senior product manager for Microsoft Auto.

Kolde wouldn’t say what types of features Kia may add but said the software could include navigation and an emergency call service activated when air bags inflate.

“What specific features you see will be tailored toward the types of vehicles they go into,” Kolde said.

Microsoft is now free to license the software to other automakers as well.

Kia has announced that interior components on its cars are smell-tested just for Europeans.

As part of the company’s push to ensure that its cars are perceived as being totally European, it seals components in a jar and has them smell-tested before they are fitted.

David Labrosse, from the product planning department of Kia’s European Research and Development centre in Germany, said:
‘The European nose is quite different to the Korean one. We like different smells so we developed odours for the car’s interior that were pleasing to Europeans.’

Labrosse says that it is difficult to describe the ideal smell, adding: ‘If we don’t like the smell, we try to find the cause of the problem by breaking the materials down and cooking them to find out where the wrong odour is coming from.’