Road Test
Kia has a reputation for being a manufacturer of appliance vehicles-you know, nothing to fall in love with, just something that runs.
That's changing. The Koreans learn fast, and their determination to succeed is, well, a Kia and present danger. (Groan here.)
Especially to the Japanese imports. As a recent J.D. Power report confirms, Korean quality-at least from the jointly owned axis of Hyundai and Kia-is closing in on the other Asian brands. As it does, of course, the distinct price advantage enjoyed by the Koreans is shrinking. Still, this Kia Spectra5 arrives with a sticker that is pleasingly light on the budget for a car with a long list of amenities, which include six airbags and four disc brakes.
Also included on the Spectra5's résumé is a degree of refinement and sophistication we weren't quite expecting from a car this low on the demographic radar. Considering that the five-door Spectra5 wears stiffer springs, tighter shocks, and thicker bars than its equally new four-door siblings (which are available as Spectra LX and EX sedans), this was a pleasant surprise. Particularly as the hatchback's ride-motion control is on the boy-racer side of the scale.
It has become clear to us that Kia gets some of its good structural rigidity with more generous allocations of material (the Sedona minivan is a real porker), and the Spectra5 duly tips the scales at 2860 pounds. A comparable Ford Focus ZX5 is about 2750. But the extra avoirdupois shouldn't be a problem for safety-conscious Americans looking to put metal between themselves and any lurking peril that might come their way.
Besides, the new Spectra boasts a larger interior, better headroom, and wider shoulder room than its competitors. The wider body brings with it a wider track than that of those rivals, too, which promises dynamic advantages. Certainly, the extra mass is shrugged off fairly well by the new 2.0-liter inline four, which features variable intake-valve timing and a bit more useful power than its predecessor (138 horsepower versus 124).
Thus motivated, the Spectra5 reached 60 mph from rest in 8.2 seconds and would have managed it in less time were it not for the need to shift into third at 57 mph. The quarter-mile arrived in 16.5 seconds at 84 mph-reasonable performance, we thought, for a budget sport hatch. The cam-timing phase shift is pretty much unnoticed during acceleration runs, but the engine goes fairly soft near its redline, revealing that torque was the engineers' priority during development.
As a result, an owner's perception of the car's performance is likely to be even better than the test figures suggest. A flexible midrange with good part-throttle response makes the Spectra5 easy to wheel around the 'burbs, and a shifter with a smooth and accurate feel finds gears with little fuss. The lever might not snick through the gates with quite the same fluidity as a Honda's, but we never missed a shift-not even when whipping through the gears at the test track-and the timing of double-clutch downshifts (for those of you who still practice this arcane ritual) came naturally.
Spirited driving is accompanied by a muted snarl similar in character to that of the top-ranking four-bangers in the field, and there's nothing cheap or tacky suggested by anything in the Kia's soundtrack. Indeed, the suspension rides quietly over the worst of Southern California's concrete ripples, and the passenger compartment is free of tedious booming and buzzing.
A clear mechanical communication between car and driver has been a feature of Korean vehicles for a couple of generations, but it was usually accompanied by some clumsy chassis calibrations that limited a driver's fun in the mountains. This is much less true with the Spectra5, whose steering is sharp and eager, and whose chassis does not call off the game with obdurate understeer.
Sure, the Kia pushes at the limit, as do all intelligently engineered front-drivers, but there's a zone just short of the limits of adhesion when the car turns in willingly, accepting extra midcorner lock without complaint. With roll-stiffness calibrations that help keep the driving wheels firmly planted and a strut-tower brace lending rigidity to the front end, the Spectra5 feels properly balanced during high-performance driving.
