Stinger vs public opinion

[19GT-AWD]

Lets extend the badge discussion, it is fruitful.

Oh really? lol

I don't wan't to hide the fact that the car is a Kia,

And I don't want to hide the fact that loyal car owners aren't afraid to display the make of their car. People are becoming too indifferent about everything. Stand up people!

I A; Just don't like the look of the Kia badge and B; Yes, I want to make people look a little closer to figure out what, exactly, the car is.

A: It's the badge KIA chose to use, on the car I chose to buy. It stays.
B: I want to make people say "What model KIA is that?"

Keeping the Kia wheel centers would do that. I would also keep the Kia steering wheel badge.

KIA center caps aren't noticeable unless you're looking for it, keeping them doesn't say much about expressing brand loyalty.

I've owned dozens of cars throughout my life, the vast majority of them being high performance vehicles. The last thing I ever cared about was badging, never even made my top 100 list of things to do.

To be honest, these cars are a touch "over-badged" already ...

Is that right?

Front Of Vehicle: 1 "KIA" Badge
Sides Of Vehicle: 0 Body Badges ("KIA" center caps irrelevant, essentially invisible)
Rear of Vehicle: 1 "KIA Badge, 1 STINGER badge
Model Dependent: 1 "GT" Badge, 1 "AWD" Badge

"Too many badges"? Not even close ...

 

[Flameangel]

Your'e always going to have pro Kia badge people and people that prefer to rebadge for whatever reason.
It's your car , your choice and you shouldn't be made to feel guilty for rebadging. Other people should be respectful of others choices even if they don't agree with it. Nuff said !

 

[1RADKIA]

Please keep in mind; most of us rebadging (myself included) did so using a ‘different” Korean spec KIA badge... NOT a Mercedes nor AUDI etc.... my badging was simply a choice of liking the other Kia badges better. “Engineering excellence”. We’re not faking anything... just proudly displaying our Stingers are a whole different breed of KIA. db

 

[Kamauxx]

Your'e always going to have pro Kia badge people and people that prefer to rebadge for whatever reason.
It's your car , your choice and you shouldn't be made to feel guilty for rebadging. Other people should be respectful of others choices even if they don't agree with it. Nuff said !

Yep. Agreed. It's been a popular discussion since the start of this forum. It isn't something that has been or will be resolved. And no one should waste their time worrying themselves with what others do with their car or money.

 

[ktstinger]

Why didn't Australia get this colour its making me cry... hello darkness my old friend...

You guys don’t have the Pantera Metal/Thunder grey exterior? It looks amazing especially with the red interior.

 

[Tangent52]

All this talk about changing the badges, don’t forget when we change the badge it's still a Kia badge. It is the symbol for Kia instead of the written word Kia.

[Edit by Manaz: Just cleaned up a reference to a deleted post.]

 

[17th_Letter]

i removed the front badge cause i like the look of a clean front. the rest of the badges stayed

 

[MerlintheMad]

i removed the front badge cause i like the look of a clean front. the rest of the badges stayed
View attachment 29536

Halfway there: ditch the plate (and keep a low profile: is that practical with a Yellow?).

 

[Tangent52]

I like. Did you vinyl wrap over the holes?

 

[17th_Letter]

No when they did the repaint I asked the body shop not to put the front emblem back.

I actually don't mind the plate so much, required by VA anyway. No such thing as low profile with the only yellow GT in the area. The other two are GT2's

 

[Dr_jitsu]

Tangent,

I want to swap out the front and back badges to something black and carbon fiber (looking). I want the stock Stinger emblem on the lower left, GT lower right and then something black in the middle. My car is white w/ red Nappa inside. I have not been able to find what I really like, so I was going to do an overlay in the meantime.

I also think that just the Stinger emblem on the back, nothing else, looks good.

Guys...this car is an absolutely beautiful design already. As stated, leaning towards minimalism is a cleaner sharper look. Look at murdered out black debadged AMG's. I just think less is more.

For example, 17th, I like how your debadged front looks.

 

[Dr_jitsu]

I am not a real doctor....I have a PhD in snarkyness.

 

[Manaz]

Why didn't Australia get this colour its making me cry... hello darkness my old friend...

We have it I believe, just not on the GT?

 

[Typeface]

We have it I believe, just not on the GT?

View attachment 29549

Theres other models?

 

[turboAWD]

I just ordered a full set of "K" overlay badges - once I found out they were the Euro spec badges, I was sold - don't like the "E" logos. "KIA" in a circle is just so boring / unimaginative - my 10 and 12 year old daughters could do 10x better in an hour, I'm sure... I replaced the front grill on my Legacy GT with an Avo grill (just mesh, no logo), and I didn't feel like I was betraying Subaru.. My past cars: VW and Subaru - they both had interesting logos.

It feels the same to me as the people who put a german license plate on their BMW or VW. And yes, this is the first car I'll actually be changing badges on. I'm 48, worked hard to be able to afford a nice car, and I'll do what I like with it. I'm mostly a "go before show" guy, and so I don't care much for spending hours and hours to remove the existing logos, possibly mess up the paint, etc. Hence the overlays. Easy enough to remove if I don't like them after all.

 

[ktstinger]

Total time to remove and rebadge was maybe 2hrs. It really is pretty quick and easy.

 

[turboAWD]

Total time to remove and rebadge was maybe 2hrs. It really is pretty quick and easy.

I've also seen a few videos of things going wrong - paint sticking/peeling. Don't really want to have that happen..

 

[Peeso33]

I've also seen a few videos of things going wrong - paint sticking/peeling. Don't really want to have that happen..

Most involved the use of a heat gun though... of course you can't hurt anything with an overlay.

 

[ktstinger]

I've also seen a few videos of things going wrong - paint sticking/peeling. Don't really want to have that happen..

Fair enough, those worried me a bit too.

 

[Manaz]

Most involved the use of a heat gun though... of course you can't hurt anything with an overlay.

This is one reason why I have used a hair dryer (and patience) for this in the past - worried what damage a heat gun can do if it sits in one spot for too long...