I'll admit that my first reaction on finding out the cars I would be testing out for review were Kias, and that one of them was the Rio, a compact car, was not excitement. I've pretty much exclusively driven vehicles from Japanese companies since I first got my license 20-something years ago, and the few Korean cars I'd driven hadn't impressed me much. I'm also a fairly tall and not-exactly-slender person, so driving a compact car was never something I'd given much consideration to.
The first car I tried out was the 2012 Kia Rio (four-door hatchback, automatic transmission). It's billed as a compact car, and it definitely looks the part from the outside. But there's almost a TARDIS effect going on, because inside the car it feels, well, comfortable. I didn't feel like I was going to bump my nose with my kneecap, and my passengers expressed their happy surprise at how much legroom they had, too. Granted, when an adult rode in the back instead of my kids, he found it a bit tight, but that frequently happens in much larger cars than the Rio. The trunk, too, fit a great deal more than I had any expectation it would.
The Rio handled very nicely, making quick maneuvers without complaint, and was aerodynamic enough that I didn't feel the wind push the car as much as I usually do in small cars. The engine was strong enough to give me confidence in its ability to accelerate to highway speeds rapidly, which it did without revving too high or sounding too taxed. The transmission did struggle a little on steep hills, but not enough that that should deter anyone from buying the car.
The Geek Factor: The Rio has much to recommend it to geeks. It comes standard with a backup camera that displays on the dash with a guide to help you determine distance to objects, which greatly helped ease my mind when in reverse as the back of the car is high enough it's hard to directly view anything below about four feet above the road surface. The stereo, at least in the model I tried, came with Sirius XM radio and HD radio included, and had a "jukebox" that could store MP3s for playback without a mobile device. If you, like me, never go anywhere without your iPhone (or similar device), you'll love the Rio's features, as it not only has a USB port that can charge your device and/or, if it's compatible, allow you to browse your music library and play any track you like from the dashboard touchscreen. If you don't have a USB cable for your device, the car supports Bluetooth audio as well as a Bluetooth phone interface that can download your entire phone book so you can browse it from the touchscreen. The Rio was the first car I'd ever driven that had all those features, so I spent a lot of time playing with them. You can get a readout wherein the computer will tell you how many more miles it thinks you can get on the amount of gas you have left, though the number fluctuated enough I wouldn't rely heavily it. The Rio's sunroof was a nice touch on a compact car, too.
The next car I got to try out was the 2012 Kia Optima Hybrid SX, and let me tell you, it was tough to give this one back. It handled very smoothly and (of course) quietly, and I never had the problem I've heard some hybrid owners do wherein, if you really need fast acceleration, it takes the car a bit longer to respond than it would for a car with a conventional engine. Every time I entered a highway or needed to make a quick correction to avoid something, the car responded right away.
The Optima was, and felt like, a spacious mid-size car, providing comfortable seats with adequate legroom. The leather front seats (at least in the SX model) have both heating and cooling systems integrated with them, a luxurious feature I'd love to have now, as summer weather kicks into high gear. The Optima features a double-length moonroof and a larger than average sunroof, which is nice for anyone who enjoys getting some sun and looks pretty nice from outside. The outside of the car is sleek and streamlined, perhaps in an effort to make it look somewhat sporty. If so, it doesn't quite succeed, as the car fairly screams family car or commuter car -- which isn't a bad thing at all, don't get me wrong. It's just that it's not an exciting car by any means, but boy is it practical.
The Geek Factor: All of the Rio's stereo and backup camera features are on the Optima, too, and then some. The screen is bigger, and accompanied by a smaller screen where the trip, and the car's computer gives you several options for what data to display on the screen -- from a gauge with leaves blowing around it that's meant to tell you how much good you're doing the environment (which really is how much bad you're not doing, but we'll let that go) to a graphical model that shows you, at any given moment, which part(s) of the engine are providing power and which are being recharged. The animated graphics used by this display are cool enough to make most geeks put it on that setting and leave it there. The other thing it will do is estimate how many miles you have left until empty, just as the Rio did, but this computation seems more stable -- and incredibly impressive, as I discovered after driving the Optima for a day and noticed the estimate was that I could still get 360 miles on the tank of gas. The driver's seat also has wonderful controls that allow you to adjust the seat in any direction, including vertically, and includes two memory slots so you can switch back and forth between different-sized drivers effortlessly.
And last but not least was the 2012 Kia Soul. The Soul is billed as a "compact multi-purpose vehicle," but what it really seemed most like to me was a slightly shrunken SUV, kind of like the Honda Element. I liked the Soul, even if it was in some ways a bit of a letdown after driving the Optima for a week.
The Soul is a bit more... spare than the Optima, sacrificing some smoothness of ride for space and some comfort for fun. By that I mean that it seems aimed a bit younger than, honestly, my generation. There are speakers everywhere, which are great for blasting your music but didn't add a great deal to my most common in-car listening material: NPR podcasts. The front side speakers even have an option to make the rings around them glow, either in a regular rotating pattern or in time with the music. The back of the car seemed designed to take more abuse than that on most cars, probably again aiming at a younger demographic.
I've never been a huge fan of driving SUVs -- I'm tall enough that I don't feel the need to get an even higher perspective on the road ahead than I already have, and it can sometimes feel a little disconcerting when I get it. So I didn't love driving the Soul, even though the engine handled just fine and it steered, while not as smoothly as the Rio or Optima, perfectly adequately and safely. If you like SUVs, but don't want one of the many you can get these days that ought to come with their own ZIP code, you could definitely do worse than the Kia Soul.
The Geek Factor: The Soul felt like a bit of a letdown in the tech department after the Optima. It still offered the same stereo/Bluetooth/backup camera features as the Rio, only on a slightly smaller screen (and a substantially smaller screen than on the Optima). The sunroof on the Soul was very nice to have, particularly on a very warm day that came by that heated the car quite a bit in the sun -- the sunroof helped funnel the hot air out as I cranked the air conditioning. The Soul is definitely not in the same geeky class as the Optima, but it gets by.
All in all, the three Kia vehicles I tried out were excellent -- they're not luxury cars, but they don't intend or pretend to be, and the Optima comes remarkably close to being one anyway. Other than that the Soul seems aimed younger than my pushing-40 self, I could easily see myself buying any of the three. The Optima, honestly, was probably the best car I've ever driven, and that includes several Toyota Camrys and a Mazda 5 (which are very good cars themselves). I've always been one to prefer practicality to flashiness in a car, and the Optima fills that bill admirably: It's comfortable, smooth to drive, handles beautifully, has outstanding gas mileage, and appeals nicely to the geek in me as well (who too often takes a back seat while driving, if that makes any sense).
All three Kias have gotten good safety ratings, and come with front and side curtain airbags, so you can be sure they'll do a good job keeping your family safe.
I look forward to seeing what kinds of improvements Kia makes to these already-fine vehicles for the 2013 model year.
All images copyright by, and courtesy of, Kia Motors America, Inc.
