Category: Kia

Kia Seltos is the Korean company’s new entrant in the rapidly expanding small SUV market. It joins big brother Sportage and aims to pull sales away from the big-selling, low-priced Mitsubishi ASX, as well as others in a crowded field. It’s well priced, with the Seltos S FWD at $25,990 and the Seltos GT Line AWD for $41,990 – driveway in both cases. Seltos is offered with two-wheel-drive (the front wheels) as well as AWD, with the latter it can be termed an SUV rather than simply a tall hatch…. Read more

Strange how words become devalued. Icon, for example, originally was ‘a painting of a sacred personage’. Through time this has wasted from being an admired stereotype to mean merely a graphic on a computer screen representing an instruction or menu option. Use by Kia of the word ‘sport’ for the Cerato 2.0 seems an odd misuse too. Sport in automotive terms conjures up something special in a vehicle, especially to do with performance. In the case of the Cerato 2.0 Sport hatchback test vehicle at $25,790, plus on roads, the… Read more

After less than two years on the Australian market, price updates, extra equipment and a streamlined model line-up feature in a refreshed 2020 Kia Stinger performance liftback range. In March 2018, automatic emergency braking and lane-keeping assist were added as standard equipment to the entry-spec Stinger 200S and 330S, resulting from a poor three-star ANCAP safety rating. The upgrade means a five-star rating now applies to the whole Stinger range. Kia Australia deleted the mid-spec Stinger Si grade from the range in July for the 2020 model year, leaving just… Read more

Kia Rio is a small five-door hatch that’s been around since the start of the millennium and has been slugging it out some of the big hitters in what is one of the most hard-fought sales segments in Australia, sub-$25,000 small cars. The latest , fourth-generation, version of the Rio first arrived here in January 2017 and received a major upgrade in November 2018 with styling tweaks and updated drivetrains including an all-new turbo-petrol engine. Three models are offered, Rio S and Sport come with a 1.4-litre naturally aspirated petrol… Read more

Kia continues its love affair unabated with ‘G’ and ‘T’ (No, not the alcoholic beverage, the sporty suffix). Hot on the heels of the Picanto GT and various GT-Line models, the Cerato came up with a ‘GT’ variant. Does it earn it? Added to this is a multi-link independent rear suspension, the work of a local ride-and-handling team of engineers tasked with matching the car with Australia’s wide-ranging road surfaces. Sport mapping added steering sharpness and weighting, as well as more precise shift points in Sport Mode, combine with a… Read more

Kia has done work on the Rio, realigning its hatchback to meet the demands of an increasingly sophisticated market. The Rio has upgraded drivetrains and revised its levels, the Si and SLi models being sidelined to make way for the new Sport. The latter featuring a six-speed automatic transmission in place of the old four-speed gearbox. While the range-topping GT-Line takes up a glad bag of goodies including a feisty 1.0-litre turbo-petrol engine mated with Kia’s own seven-speed dual clutch automatic. The entry-level Rio S is unchanged, with the 74… Read more