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Feds investigating Kia Sorento over shattered sunroofs

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into 64,000 Kia Sorento crossovers due to complaints from owners that the sunroof can shatter unexpectedly. This probe affects Sorento models from the 2011, 2012 and 2013 model years.
According to The Detroit News, NHTSA has received 15 complaints from Sorento owners citing sunroofs that shattered, 13 of which reportedly happened while the vehicle was in motion. No crashes have been reported from this problem, but one complaint did cite minor injuries - cuts from the shattered glass.
The automaker told The Detroit News that it "has been evaluating the performance of its panoramic sunroof as part of ongoing vehicle monitoring activities conducted as a standard practice on all Kia models." Kia's corporate cousin, Hyundai, recently had similar sunroof problems with its Veloster hatchback.

Kia's brand perception still painfully lags behind reality

I can't tell you how many times I've been driving with friends or family in a decidedly nice Korean press car, only to have a passenger notice the logo on the steering wheel and exclaim, "Wait... this is a Kia?" For every time I roll my eyes at a story with a lede about how Hyundai "is really gaining momentum these days," I get equally annoyed when people comment on how Kia is finally starting to make decent cars. This is hardly news. The brand has been pumping out really solid stuff for a while now.
But as it turns out, not everyone knows that. According to Ward's Auto, speaking to Kia marketing chief Michael Sprague, the automaker recently placed third-to-last in a recent ALG Brand Perception of Quality study, only besting Suzuki and Smart. Wow.
Ward's notes that Kia recently earned a credible sixth place in J.D. Power & Associates' Initial Quality Study, and yet still fell way behind pretty much every other brand in the ALG study. The Korean automaker's cars have also won numerous awards in recent years, and have generally earned positive reviews from the media, Autoblog included.

Kia using quality and technology to increase sales and brand prestige

Kia is a long way from hawking the anonymous lozenge known as the Sephia on our shores. That was only 1994, though, and in less than 20 years the company has gone from judging its aspirations against Japanese budget competition to walking auto show floors checking out the German standard-bearers for tips on how to increase sales and brand prestige. In an interview with Automotive News, Kia executives laid out their plan for carving out a Volkswagen-like niche for the company whereby they could be viewed as the premium pick in a volume segment. Concepts like the Kia Cub, above, would seem to point in this direction.
Kia is keen to make sure its sales targets don't impinge on its quest for better and better quality.
Kia's prime directive is "an unrelenting focus on quality." The Japanese brands earned a reputation for bulletproof reliability, and Kia is keen to make sure its sales targets don't impinge on its quest for better and better quality - neither in-house nor for its suppliers, a trade-off we've seen go wrong before. It has a Pilot Center that studies each new model for potential production problems before being given the approval for manufacture, and it isn't until the quality control department gives the okay that manufacture can begin.