Kia Swansea
Looking to buy a Kia? Find out what's good, what's bad and what to watch out for from Honest John.
Good: Thoroughly competent large front-drive saloon with diesel engine and low price.
Bad: Interior plastics and glues smell a bit. Belt cam diesel. 3 year, not 5 or 7 year warranty.
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Good: Oddball, but has advantages of very comfortable seats, excellent 1.6 diesel and petrol engines, option of diesel auto, and quirky enough for cult stat
Bad: No sportscar to drive.
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Good: 3-door version of a very good family car with excellent chain cam 1.4 and 1.6 petrol engines and a state of the art chain cam 1.6 diesel. 7 year warr
Bad: Doesn't ride or handle quite as well as a Focus. Rear vision not great fro reversing.
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Built on a platform with a wheelbase of 114.0 inches, an overall length of 192.1 inches and overall width of 75.4 inches, the Borrego offers a roomy interior with standard three rows of seating for up to seven passengers.
Good: Roomy, well equipped and keen value. Diesel is easy on the fuel. Four-star crash test rating.
Bad: Cabin finish is pretty average.
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Built on a platform with a wheelbase of 114.0 inches, an overall length of 192.1 inches and overall width of 75.4 inches, the Borrego offers a roomy interior with standard three rows of seating for up to seven passengers.
Numerous innovations including a higher output 154 horsepower fuel cell in Swansea and a new 450-volt Supercapacitor give the Borrego FCEV higher performance, a greatly extended driving range and cold-weather starting capability to operate in sub-zero temperatures.
Good: Option of seven usable seats. All rear seats fold into the boot floor. Roomy. Five-year warranty on models sold since September 2006.
Bad: Foot-operated parking brake won't appeal to everyone. Poor turning circle.
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Good: Cheap now. Some versions seat six.
Bad: Ugly. Six-seaters are really 4+2 and lack boot space.
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Good: Tidy-looking Scenic rival at keen prices. Practical design details. The promise of trouble-free ownership.
Bad: Unsatisfying gearshift on manual versions and gearboxes don't last. Doesn't quite look right.
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If style, image and status are important to you, then what follow are wasted words. The KIA Carens II just isn’t your kind of car in Swansea. On the other hand, if you want a strong, practical, economical, decent to drive, comfortable, safe and sensibly priced MPV, then it is.
KIA Carens III is good looking, not in an alien South Korean kind of way, but aesthetically pleasing by any standards. It has a pleasant interior, with practical touches like a shelf in front of the passenger, a dashboard that doesn’t reflect in the windscreen and even a ‘curry hook’ in the passenger footwell.
Good: Designed for Europe. Built in Slovakia. Excellent 1.4 and 1.6 petrol and 1.6 diesel engines. Decent quality and handling. 7 year powertrain warranty.
Bad: Not quite as well finished as its twin the Hyundai i30, but still a very good car that deserves to be on shopping lists.
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This mid-life change unusually includes sheet metal changes to the bonnet plus alterations to the bumper, grille and light clusters. There have been some enhancements to the interior too in terms of specification and design including a more intuitive centre console and upgraded audio system including Bluetooth connectivity.
The new Kia cee'd range will deliver a host of customer benefits including numerous exterior and interior design refinements, upgraded standard equipment and technical innovations. The cee'd also gets a fully-revised suspension set-up.
The KIA Cee’d and Hyundai i30 have been getting rave reviews from a press that usually shuns South Korean cars. Recently, Andrew Frankel writing for ‘Autocar’ pitched an i30 against a Focus, a Golf and a Peugeot 308, and the i30 won.
Three things instantly identify any car from South Korea: the indicator switch will be on the right; it will have a horribly fiddly DIN fit radio; and the plastic inside will stink.
Good: Practical, well-equipped cabin and a good-sized boot. Decent motorway cruiser.
Bad: Concerns over crash test ratings.
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Good: Cheap and well equipped, especially the Executive range-topper.
Bad: No image, lacklustre drive.
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The Forte LPI hybrid car in Swansea runs on both Liquefied Petroleum Gas - a popular fuel in Korea - and electricity. It employs a hybrid system which supports the internal combustion engine during motor starts and acceleration.
Good: Seven seats.
Bad: Plain styling. Never sold officially in the UK.
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Good: Frugal diesel engine, huge boot and a respectable drive. Five-star crash rating in US tests.
Bad: Bit plain for some tastes.
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Big, five-seater 166bhp V6 air-conditioned saloon with ABS and alloys for £12,995 on the road. Well, obviously, I had to check it out. As you can see, it's not bad looking either. There's a bit of Mitsubishi about it, a hint of Honda Accord, and something of the BMW 3 Series, but nothing startling or strange.
Good: Stacked with kit and very cheap to buy. V6 makes a pleasing sound and is a decent drive.
Bad: Early cars better looking. Facelift had the opposite effect. Some suspect quality plastics and trim.
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Good: Thoroughly competent large front-drive saloon with diesel engine and low price.
Bad: Interior plastics and glues smell a bit. Belt cam diesel. 3 year, not 5 or 7 year warranty.
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Good: Reliable, well assembled and cheap.
Bad: Short on kit, image and driving appeal.
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Good: Available for not much money now. Solidly built and reliable.
Bad: Dull looks, bland drive and fairly basic equipment levels.
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Good: Inexpensive. Trouble-free ownership is an odds-on bet.
Bad: Better styling than previous model but still no looker. Unremarkable drive.
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KIA No 3 concept in Swansea for mini MPV shown at Salon de l'Automobile in Geneva March 2009. 4,045 mm long, finished in matt Titanium Grey with contrasting gloss-white accents. Based on same basic platform as Hyundai i20 and KIA Soul.
First impression of the KIA Picanto is of a rather surprised little car. It seems to have huge eyes and a small open mouth that aren’t quite how you expect a car to look. But it comes in a range of bright colours, including orange, red, blue and green as well as black.
Good: Fantastic brakes, reasonable handling and surprisingly refined. Cheap to buy and run.
Bad: Tiny boot with the rear seats in place.
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Good: Cheap, and probably painless, urban transport.
Bad: Felt past its sell-by date, even at the time.
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Good: 3-door version of a very good family car with excellent chain cam 1.4 and 1.6 petrol engines and a state of the art chain cam 1.6 diesel. 7 year warr
Bad: Doesn't ride or handle quite as well as a Focus. Rear vision not great fro reversing.
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This three-door pro_cee’d fills a hole in the KIA clan as it is very sporty looking number that should appeal to customers in Swansea who have so far dismissed the KIA brand as unsuitable for their needs. Not only that, the pro_cee’d is the only three-door in Europe.
Features of KIA Rio available in Swansea include a proper manufacturer's three-year warranty, a driver's airbag, seatbelt pretensioners, body-colour bumpers, a 60/40 split-folding rear seat and plenty of luggage space. Read on to learn more information in the following article.
Good: A lot of car for little money.
Bad: All the driving appeal of a four-wheeled domestic appliance. Rust can be a problem.
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Good: Roomy, well equipped and keen value. Diesel is easy on the fuel. Four-star crash test rating.
Bad: Cabin finish is pretty average.
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The original KIA Rio had a unique selling proposition. In the following article, you will learn some information about KIA Rio II which is an excellent vehicle available on the market in Swansea at low price. Read on to get more information.
Family car at baby car price. Lots of extras at a stripped out price. 1.4 engine for the price of a 1.2. All that kind of stuff. And even though the old Rio was a lot of car for the money, it wasn’t really much of a car.
Good: Seven adult-friendly seats. Huge boot as a five-seater. Twin sliding side doors. Well equipped and an easy, comfortable drive.
Bad: Rear seats don't fold into the floor and are quite heavy to lift in and out.
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Good: Very roomy, practical, cheap load-hauler and people-carrier. Plenty of used ones to choose from.
Bad: Compromised 2-2-3 seating layout. Seats heavy to remove. Poor crash test rating. Drives like a truck, with severe understeer.
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Good: Presentable, trouble-free hatch that's cheap to buy and run.
Bad: Handling isn't in its vocabulary. Poor showing in 2005 JD Power Customer Satisfaction Survey.
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“Friendly” is a good word to describe the KIA Sorento. It’s like a big (surprisingly BIG) huggy bear of a car. Women drivers in particular will love its muscular, protective hunkiness coupled with its gentle nature.
Good: Has the hardware and ability for serious off-roading. Easy-going, pleasant drive. Useful tow car. Owners like them. Excellent value.
Bad: Doesn't handle as well as a RAV-4 or X-Trail.
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New Kia Sorento in Swansea made debut at Seoul Motor Show 1-4-2009. Five-door, five or seven seater, with new all-steel unitary construction bodyshell. 4,685mm x 1,885mm wide x 1,710mm high. Depending on market, choice of four transversely-mounted petrol and diesel engines, driving the front or front and rear wheels via a five- or six-speed manual or five- or six-speed automatic transmission with Sport Mode (depending on model).
