News & Reviews- Make: Kia

As far as the subcompact car segment goes, Kia is a serious contender. The Rio pulls droves of new car buyers into the South Korean automaker's Canadian dealerships, building all-important market share the brand hopes will one day translate into more profitable compact to mid-size car and crossover sales.

While the compact Soul does well in its segment, Kia struggles to sell its three compact Forte models in similar numbers to more established players; ditto for the compact Rondo MPV, smallest Sportage crossover, midsize Optima sedan, larger Cadenza luxury sedan, excellent Sedona minivan, and shockingly good full-size K900 luxury sedan, and not because they're somehow inferior, but more so due to Canadian buyers not having the brand as high on their collective radar. Subcompact buyers, however, know exactly where to find the best value, and the little Rio drives a very hard bargain.

For $14,095 plus $1,485 for freight and pre-delivery prep you can get into a very nicely Read Full Story

The Kia Sportage delivers loads of style, plenty of room, strong performance, decent fuel economy, an impressive set of features and truly competitive pricing, so why doesn't it sell as well as the rest of its compact crossover cronies? Without doubt this troubles Kia, but as we've learned the South Korean company never shrinks away from a challenge.

Just the same, the Sportage doesn't have a mere molehill to climb, it's a mammoth mountain. First the good news, its place on last year's Canadian sales chart wasn't last. Kia has Mitsubishi to thank for that, its fugly Outlander only capable of attracting 5,330 buyers. The good-looking Sportage, mind you, only squeaked past with 6,025 sales. I couldn't help but find this surprising, especially when factoring in the Volkswagen Tiguan managed 10,096 sales, the GMC Terrain pulled off 11,524 deliveries, the Sportage's brotha' from the same motha' Hyundai Tucson found 11,856 customers, the Subaru Forester more than doubled the Sportage's Read Full Story

What's the world coming to? It's like asking the girl taking orders at the McD's drive-through to biggie size your '57 Dom Pérignon and by all means don't forget to add extra truffles to your foie gras burger. A Kia designed to compete with a BMW 7 Series? Ridiculous!

Think for a moment that legendary luxury brands such as Cadillac and Lincoln don't even offer a full-size rear-drive premium sedan within their current lineups, let alone relative newcomers like Acura and Infiniti, while budget-minded Kia and its South Korean parent company's namesake value-brand Hyundai do. Yes, we certainly live in strange times. Then again, how wonderful life has become for those with a few extra thousand available in their annual automotive budgets.

No matter the angle, the Kia K900 is a beautiful luxury car. Its overall shape is long, lean and athletic, sporty looking for its size yet as elegantly penned as anything in the full-size luxury sedan segment. Put it next to the Read Full Story

If ever there was a car ten times more exciting to look at than it is to drive, the Kia Optima Hybrid is it.

But don't go thinking it's a bad car or anything remotely negative. The Optima Hybrid is just so aggressively attractive that its comfortable, relaxing performance is a bit of a letdown. On the positive, it's every bit as thrilling to pilot down a curving two-lane roadway as a Hyundai Sonata Hybrid or Toyota Camry Hybrid, all of the above only capable of getting the blood boiling if a tendency to produce body roll and then understeer to the point of squealing and squawking low rolling resistance tires when pushed hard is your idea of excitement. It isn't mine, but then again I do get mighty pumped when my fuel bill goes down.

My opening sentence was both a compliment and derision of the new Optima Hybrid, its eye-catching styling making it one of the best looking four-door sedans in the mainstream midsize volume-brand class. This has helped it sell very well, Read Full Story

When I first started in the automotive journalism profession 15 years ago, Kia was a brand relegated to fulfilling needs, not wants. Certainly a new car was and still is considered better than a used one, depending on which car that is of course, but in the brand status pecking order Kia only rose above the very bottom because its South Korean rival, Daewoo, already occupied that spot.

How much has changed in 15 years. Daewoo is history in North America, a memory long since absorbed into the massive General Motors' conglomerate, and Kia, now part of Hyundai Motors Corp., is one of the most aspirational brands in the entire mainstream and even near-luxury sectors. Somewhere between the entry-level Rio and top-line K900 is the Soul, a unique five-door wagon-cum-crossover that truly defies description. When it debuted it wasn't without a similarly oddball caste of cubist competitors, such as the Honda Element, Nissan Cube and Scion xB, and while not the sole survivor in its class Read Full Story