If indeed this is true, it wouldn't be the first time Kia has bought the designs of another manufactorer's car. Remember the FWD Lotus Elan of the early 1990's? Kia revived that car minus the Isuzu engine.

Also, a similar situation was seen with the DeTomasa/Qvale Mangusta (btw, this is my all time vote for ugliest car EVER!) which become a MG.

 

This was one of those stories that was so amazing that if it had come from anyone else you wouldn't believe it.

This came from a Kia sales rep, so naturally I gave the story more benefit than I normally would.

 

GuionM, I've seen alot of your information pan out before, but you are way out there this time. I can assure you that the FWD V6 Kia Amanti has noting to do with the RWD, V12 Mazda-designed "Amati" that was cancelled 12 years ago.

 

After Romano Artoli bought Lotus from GM, the factory still had a big stockpile of out-of-production Isuzu motors. (By this point, Isuzu had stopped building passenger cars.) Basically, Lotus produced Elan Series 2 car until they ran out of motors. Then, Artoli sold the tooling (the cost of which had be written off by GM) to the Koreans, and use the money to finance the Elise.

Interestingly, the Kia "Elan" supposedly had far worse handling than the Lotus original. In addition, the Kia motor was horrible, managing to be far worse than the original Isuzu unit.

It's easy to see why Kia failed as an independant car maker.

 

Why on earth would they have mucked around with the suspension? If there's one thing that Lotus knows, it's handling. Did the Kia engineers think they could've improved it somehow?

 

I'll agree on this now that I've dug around some. The rep didn't know what he was talking about.

Once again, the value of not relying on only one source of info (or taking anyone person's word as gold) is demonstrated.