I reported last week on the unexpected departure of Kia's head US honcho Len Hunt and marketing maven Ian Beavis. Details of why they left seem to now be surfacing.

Executives close to the matter said Byung Mo Ahn, who returned to Kia's Irvine, Calif., headquarters Feb. 4 in the newly created position of chairman and group CEO of KIA Motors America, doesn't like the current brand of humor in Kia's ads, according to executives close to the matter. One of those executives said Mr. Ahn prefers to show the cars and trucks as serious contenders with good quality. I agree with the dour Mr. Ahn on the Kia Maniac commercial, it sucked, but get a life and sense of humor Ahn

The leave-takings came less than a week after Mr. Beavis unveiled the automaker's "Unheard of President's Day Sale" campaign that honors, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, 13th President Milliard Fillmore for being the first president to have running water in the White House. The punchline of new TV ads promoting the sale is a soap-on-a-rope bust of President Fillmore; the automaker handed out the same soaps to reporters at its media dinner last week during the Chicago Auto Show.

Humor and irreverence has been a staple of Kia's advertising since it hit U.S. shores in 1994. An early TV commercial showed college students zipping around a field in a Sportage writing "Bite Me" in deep grass with the wheels of the SUV.

Like I said last week, sorry to see these two maverick go.