Independent Reviews
May 2012
There is no doubt that the new KIA cee’d for 2012 is a good-looking car. The styling simply works in the manner that an Audi A3 or a Vauxhall Astra are pleasing to the eye, yet clearly have a family resemblance to other cars from the same stable.
Look at the trademark ‘bow tie’ grille, the swept back headlights and coupe-like rake to the rear and it clearly bears a family resemblance to the KIA Picanto, KIA Rio, KIA Sportage and KIA Optima.
It’s not a forced look and it doesn’t make the cars impractical. 380 litres of boot space in the new cee’d is, for example, much more than the 277 litres in the current Focus. True, KIAs aren’t brilliant to reverse park in the rain, but you can’t have everything. (And you do get a reversing camera in top versions with built-in satnav.)
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June 20th 2012
'Wow!” is not a word that has often reverberated around the cabin when somebody sits in a Kia car for the first time. But that, truly, was the sound I heard coming from my mouth when I got behind the wheel of the top-spec 1.6 CRDi version of the new Kia Cee’d. I was almost as surprised at myself as by the brazenly self-confident presence of this car.
The rise of the Korean Kia/Hyundai group during the past 10 years is one of the world’s most dramatic and significant stories, with profound implications for the international balance in business, politics and economics. As with the Tata group of India, owners of Jaguar Land Rover, the planet has tilted on its axis under the weight of Kia/Hyundai’s ferocious, brilliantly orchestrated assault.
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