GazChap wrote:
Cavey wrote:
Ugh, don’t do it mate. It’s got a pretty face and it’s certainly quick, but it’s a Kia and therefore white goods in motoring terms.
Every manufacturer had to start somewhere, Cavey.
Oh sure, but whereas, say, good (boring) reliable family motors at a cut price and great warranty etc. are all well and good, this is a very different proposition to producing good sports cars, surely? It's a well trodden path after all; Datsun/Nissan and Toyota etc. produced well specced, cheapo family cars for a couple of decades or more before producing anything actually worth driving as a mainstream sports car, from an enthusiasts POV, and even then had to call on third party consultancy expertise from Lotus etc. IIRC. (Honda were a bit different, granted, but they had their sports bike expertise and awesome engineers). Even Alfa Romeo, with a motoring heritage that the likes of bloody *Kia* can only dream about, have struggled for at least two decades to produce a decent sports car, or even sporting saloon - having only now *just* done so.
I've driven various perfectly worthy Kias in the last couple of years as hire cars - pretty mid-spec, well equipped type stuff but all with absolutely zero steering feel, or indeed any discernible personality whatsoever. Like I say, white goods.
It all comes back to why someone like Hearthly, not an average punter but an enthusiast and petrolhead, spends so much money on cars and changing them. That Leon he is in would keep 99% of people (and probably everyone here apart from you, me and him) very happy, but it's just never going to cut it for the likes of us. Unfortunately perhaps, most expensively certainly.
I read somewhere fairly recently that all modern RS Fords have an incredibly difficult, painful and loss-leadingly expensive gestation; one has only to think of the troubled, skittish but incredible charismatic, marmite Mk 1 RS Focus, the 'revoknuckle' Mk 2 Focus, the RS Cosworth Escort... and how few and far between they are. Even 1980s stuff like the "jellymould" Sierra Cosworth RS500 fetches £140,000 now; I seriously doubt any Kia will ever command such affection and reverence - and let alone actual REAL RS Fords like the Mk 1 and Mk 2 Escort RS1600/RS1800/RS2000. These cars are the stuff of dreams every one; Kias just aren't.
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Beware of gavia articulata oculos...
Dr Lave wrote:
Of course, he's normally wrong but
interestingly wrong