"You set long-term and ambitious objectives not knowing when you’ll hit them, but if you’re not ambitious, you won’t grow even if your ambitions are such that it takes a long time to get there.”

Paul Philpott, president and CEO of Kia in the UK, set a hugely ambitious goal 15 years ago, when he joined Kia, for the brand to reach 100,000 sales. The goal back then, when Kia was selling around 30,000 cars a year, could be seen as fanciful. A decade and a half on, only Audi, BMW, Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen sit above it in the sales charts, and Kia grew by more than all of them last year.