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Sprague Adds Sales Duties as Kia Retools

Officials at Irvine-based Kia Motors America Inc. have done some internal restructuring coming off a sales slowdown for the automaker.

Kia, part of South Korea-based Kia Motors Corp., reported a 4% decline in sales for 2013 to 535,179 vehicles. The drop-off came after three straight years of record-breaking growth for the brand in the U.S. and ran counter to an 8% industrywide increase last year, when 15.6 million new vehicles were sold.

Kia on Feb. 7 created the position of executive vice president of sales and marketing, promoting Michael Sprague to the spot.

The position brings new duties for Sprague, who previously served as the automaker’s executive vice president of marketing and communications. He now oversees sales, marketing and retail development for the automaker.

Sprague couldn’t be reached for comment for this story.

Adam Perlow, former eastern region executive director at the automaker, was named vice president of sales operations and now reports to Sprague.

“This restructuring is intended to support our long-term strategy and continued growth in the U.S. market,” Byung

Mo Ahn, Kia Motors America and Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia group president and chief executive, said in a statement.

The appointments came with the announcement that the company’s former executive vice president of sales, Tom Loveless, parted ways with the automaker. Kia didn’t provide a reason for the departure. Loveless couldn’t be reached for comment.

It’s not the first automotive executive departure in recent months.

Fountain Valley-based Hyundai Motor America Inc. named a new chief executive following the completion of former chief John Krafcik’s contract.

Hyundai logged four straight years of record-breaking sales under Krafcik and increased sales 2.5% last year to 720,783 vehicles. His departure at the end of last year caught industry observers by surprise.

Hyundai recently promoted Dave Zuchowski to replace Krafcik.

Cypress-based Mitsubishi Motors North America Inc. more recently named Ryujiro Kobashi as chief executive to replace Yoichi Yokozawa, who was reassigned to the company’s global headquarters in Tokyo.

Mitsubishi sales have been slowly recovering from a recent sales slump. It posted a 8.3% increase last year to 62,655 vehicles.

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