If you open the catalogs of a number of car manufacturers these days, you often have to do your best to find a smaller model. The times for A-segmenters such as the late Citroën C1, the late Peugeot 108 or the late Ford Ka are over for a while, while Renault only offers its Twingo in electric form and the Volkswagen Up! fluctuates between life and death. That carnage is now slowly but surely also reaching the B segment, because after the Ford Fiesta, the days now also seem numbered for another compact hatchback.
The first of many?
Kia has revealed to the British Autocar that it will soon stop deliveries of new Rios to Europe. The Rio is currently still in the Belgian Kia configurator, but that could come to an end this year. Then there will not just be a new Rio to replace it, because according to insiders, the void would simply be filled by the technically related Kia Stonic … Or how the SUV madness competes with another affordable model from the world.
However, we shouldn’t entirely blame long-legged tormentors for the demise of the Rio. For example, the small Kia is not exactly the most popular offering in its class, with 32,506 European sales compared to, for example, 164,119 for the Opel Corsa last year. In addition, the financial prospect of the upcoming Euro 7 standard hangs over the heads of all car manufacturers, making it increasingly difficult to keep compact models affordable by, for example, spooning in a nice and simple combustion engine. So you can count on it that after the Fiesta and the Rio a few other cheerful names will go down… How about ‘Polo’ or ‘Ibiza’, for example?
