Nik J Miles

Posts Tagged ‘Kia’

Kia headed off in a new direction with the GT Concept revealed at the recent Frankfurt Auto Show.  Under the typical auto show bling of copper trims, carbon-fiber wheel fins and suicide doors lies Kia’s first rear-wheel drive platform and a striking four-door coupe design.  Read the rest of this entry »

Leader of the Compact Utility Movement

Santa Fe, NM – One vehicle category we’ve come to enjoy for travel is the group of compact to mid-size SUVs, crossovers and similar vehicles.  In general, this group offers roomy interiors, comfortable rides, reasonable fuel economy and on occasion, the advantage of having all-wheel drive for occasional adverse weather or for exploring back roads.

On a recent trip to one of our favorite vacation locations, Santa Fe, NM we borrowed the compact Kia Sportage SUV. Read the rest of this entry »

With U.S. Kia sales up by 45 percent through May 2011, the company is running out of production capacity.  The West Point Georgia plant is currently building 300,000 vehicles a year using two shifts and working every other Saturday.  To meet customer demand, Kia Motors of America officials announced a $100 million expansion plan to increase production capacity to 360,000 vehicles per year. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kia Sportage Turbo is the most intuitive vehicle I’ve ever driven.

It doesn’t do anything differently than other vehicle. It doesn’t have a joystick drive system and it doesn’t read your thoughts and suggest radio stations you might like. It’s actually quite regular. But it does everything so effortlessly; driving becomes a calming, Zen experience. Read the rest of this entry »

Kia is exploring the modern-day “activity van” with a recently unveiled concept called the KV7.

Expanding on recent design success like the Soul, Sorento, Sportage and the Forte Koup, the KV7 takes a functional approach to a mobile gathering space by taking the concept beyond mere transportation.   With a single gull wing door on the passenger side opening to a spacious and adaptable interior space the KV7 becomes a great space for friends to gather, as well as go places and carry things. Read the rest of this entry »

Great Car, Strong Power, but no “Wow”

On one hand it was a gutsy move for Kia to offer the new mid-size Optima sedan without an optional V-6 engine, on the other hand it was visionary.  The Toyota Camry has a six-cylinder option, so does the Honda Accord, Ford Focus and all the other competitors in that midsize group.  (Okay, there is one exception, but it’s the Kia’s sibling, the Hyundai Sonata which uses the same engine as Kia.) Read the rest of this entry »

Barbara – By looks alone, the new Kia Optima is a winner.  Sure, I could go into all the specs about how it’s longer, wider and lower than the previous version, etcetera, etcetera,  but that doesn’t give you the visual impact that seeing it person does; and photos just don’t do it justice.

Styled in Kia’s Frankfurt, Germany and Irvine, Calif. design studios, the Optima is not the product of cookie cutter design, it is fresh and sleek with a well-toned muscular silhouette.  The grille is unmistakable Kia with the bold tabbed family grille book-ended by projector headlights.  And on top of it all, it has one of those swooping four-door coupe rooflines that are such a rage. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes a car catches me totally off guard because it turns out to be so much more fun to drive than I expected.  The Kia Forte Koup is such a car.  While its namesake, the Kia Forte sedan is a very good car and an excellent value, it’s not the kind of car that makes me jump up on the table and say, “Wow! What a fun car to drive.”  The Koup, on the other hand, got me very excited.

In late 2009, about six months after the introduction of the new Forte, Kia rolled out a two-door coupe version of the Forte, called the Koup (which I understand is a marriage of words Kia and coupe).  Because it wasn’t available in the press fleet, I didn’t pay much attention to the little coupe until several months later when I had a chance to drive it at a media event sponsored by one of our auto writer groups. Read the rest of this entry »

NWAPA

Imagine driving a very cool new car for a distance between 9 to 25 miles, getting out and then into another very cool car for another 9 to 25 mile leg and then repeating the same routine through 23 cars in a two day period.

Welcome to the 2010 NWAPA (Northwest Automotive Press Association) Run to the Sun held recently in western Washington.  After 23 cars and more than 450 miles of smiles, here are our quick impressions of the Kia Forte Koup.

NWAPA

Since opening four dealerships in the Portland, Ore. area in 1994, Kia has made gigantic strides in quality, quantity  of models and sales (the big one). With most of Kia’s emphasis on the economical sedans and wagon-style vehicles, we hear little about the Forte Koup (coupe).  In fact, since it was introduced at the 2009 New York auto show, we have had almost no drive time in it.  After quick drives at the “Run”, we were both surprised by how much we liked this little two-door.  It’s available in two models with two engines and three transmissions.  The “Run” car was the upper level SX with a 173-hp, 2.4-liter four cylinder driving the front wheels through the six-speed manual transmission.  The attractive Koup makes the 0 to 60 mph run in 8.3 seconds, which is no big deal, but the driving fun factor was an 8 or  9.  We are anxious to spend more time in this one.  Pricing starts at $17,290 for the EX with five-speed manual transmission and peaks at just over $21,000 for the SX with an automatic moonroof and leather seating.

See the other 22 “Run to the Sun” Cars here.

San Francisco – Kia was actually one of the leaders of the compact SUV movement in the United States when they introduced the original Sportage in 1993, more than three years before the first Honda CR-V or the Toyota RAV4.

Moving into the third generation with the introduction of the 2011 Sportage, the sophisticated new CUV (compact utility vehicle) is a perfect illustration of how far this brand has come in less than two decades and it is a bellwether to the company’s future. Read the rest of this entry »