Be Excellent To Each Other

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.

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.

Maybe I need to take a second look at Citroen Picassos.

:D

At least it's not electric mate, all is not lost.

You gonna stand for that, petrolheads?

...But it’s the V6 Stinger GT S that really shows off the car’s much-hyped honing, and sticks it to the likes of BMW and Audi with a genuinely entertaining chassis. It’ll do 167mph and 0-62mph in 5.1sec. But first, you’ll be wanting to choose your mode. There’s plenty…

The Stinger suffers from a phenomenon we shall call Mode Overload. Or maybe OverMode. Kia’s very proud of the five settings that control the car’s steering, ride and engine response, but the fact is there’s not a great deal of distance between them.

You’ll start in Comfort, which isn’t terribly interesting. ‘Eco’ stifles all responses in an effort to save fuel, so you might not spend much time there either. ‘Smart’ is a clever idea – it’s supposed to learn your driving style and adapt to it, but its effects are too subtle. And if you have a sporty driving style, you might as well twist the knob towards Sport, which adds fake noise, stiffer suspension and slightly heavier steering. Sport Plus keeps all of that on and switches the traction control off. Sport is the best: you put up with the gloopier steering weight to have the fizzier powertrain and tighter body control. It’s supposed to be a sports saloon right? If you want a car of this size and price that totally changes its behaviour as you cycle through modes, go check out the Mercedes-AMG C43.

Settled into Sport Mode, the Stinger sets about pleasantly surprising you. It steers accurately, and the variable ratio set-up isn’t so overly rapid that the front tyres get caught out every time you pour it into a corner. Looking at you, C43.

So, you find some corners and discover there’s a pleasant, easy-going balance to the chassis, which manages the critical trick of hiding its weight without detaching you from what’s going on at the wheels. It floats a little if you’re bounding over crests, but the suspension tidies up the movements professionally and there’s less body roll than you’d expect for such a sizeable barge. The Brembo brakes aren’t brimming with precision, but they’re abuse-absorbing, and if you’re going to hustle the Stinger, it’s reassuring to know the stoppers aren’t made from the chocolate wafers BMW M Sport discs are.

On the road, the Stinger doesn’t just hide its weight, it also shrinks its size. It feels no bigger or more cumbersome than a 4 Series. It cruises extremely quietly. And it feels quick too. The V6 is more on the Audi S4 end of the charisma scale than up there with the raucous C43, but it delivers power with a broad, stout linearity, and the eight gear ratios are chosen cleverly. Turbo lag? Not a problem.

The gearbox is less impressive. The changes, manual or automated, just aren’t that quick, and because you’re denied a true manual mode, it’ll get properly flustered if paddleshift override disagrees with its opinion of what gear to pick next. It always auto upchanges at the (fake) redline, and if you accidentally trigger the lockdown button you might as well stick the hazards on while the transmission fumbles for the shortest gear possible.

On the road, the Stinger doesn’t just hide its weight, it also shrinks its size.

Yeah if the AMG is a similar price I'm having that instead.

Merc: £47, 650 - £56,780
Kia: £31,140 – £39,240

So no, not that close.

Merc: £47, 650 - £56,780
Kia: £31,140 – £39,240

So no, not that close.

Top Gear give it a rating of 6/10, which isn't bad for a first stab to be fair.

it was more the duff gearbox

floaty suspension, gloopy steering and fake noise, fake redline etc.

Kia Prides were mazdas 121

Has anyone seen the new Fiesta in the wild yet? I saw one the other day. It's the same size as a Mk1 Focus.

I certainly don't know the legal ins and outs, but as per your agreement with the dealer, you were selling them the car without the private plate. So they've then gone ahead and sold something they never owned. It's on them to fix that, by whatever means necessary.

Hearthly, do you have a personalised plate? If not, how do you keep up with all the different rego plates?

Do you have a Vision-esque spreadsheet?

@zoidberg: is it the kind of personalisation that’s specific to you (as in first-initial,last initial, birth year... sort of thing) that would be gobbledegook to most people, or is it generally recognisable as a personalised plate but still with a limited audience (FR3DD13, or something on those lines), or an obvious ‘everyone might like that’ kind of plate (FA5T C4R, or something along those lines)? I just wondered why the new buyer isn’t answering the calls?

Not Hearthly, but I do indeed have a spreadsheet of all of my previous cars - although freakishly I can remember their original number plates anyway, in order of when I bought them too.

He already stated it was TD1 4LEX. TDI is a type of turbo diesel engine.

Not Hearthly, but I do indeed have a spreadsheet of all of my previous cars - although freakishly I can remember their original number plates anyway, in order of when I bought them too.

Apologies Dr Zoidberg, I’d evidently missed your previous post.

I wonder if the new owner is avoiding the contact with a sight to sell the plates on? Unless (s)he just happens to share the same name, of course?

It’ll be that, or they can’t be bothered with the hassle of changing the number plate, updating their insurance and dealing with paperwork.

And to be fair, why should they? They bought a car with a number plate included. I doubt I’d hand it over without some financial incentive from the dealer who messed up if it were me.

I’d have hoped that the dealer was offering compensation, because otherwise they’re surely going to be out of pocket to you for a higher sum?

How many have you had? I can do that too, but I've only had 6 cars (plus a couple of Lady T's I suppose), which isn't really all that much.

They haven't told me what, if anything, they offered the new keeper.
Anyway, I've sent them screenshots of some similar plates for sale and will see what they say.

24, 25 if you include the Skoda I bought for Jem.

There's a thread somewhere.