First Drive Review
A Kia has never made it onto a C/D 10Best list. A Kia has never won anyone's car-of-the-year award that we're aware of. Kia doesn't have a racing heritage, and you won't see some despot head of state parading around in an open-air Kia. Perhaps you're aware that parking valets at nightclubs don't put Kias up front with the Ferraris and Porsches. In short, Kia has no laurels to rest on. And its second-generation Sedona minivan won't likely change that. But it's the best product the company has sent to America, a van that's dynamically and feature-for-feature competitive with any other. And it's a bargain. This is not the Kia a buyer settles for only after even the Hyundai and Mitsubishi dealers have rejected his credit app.
Although the infamously porky first Sedona split the difference between the short- and long-wheelbase Chrysler minivans, the new one will itself come in two dimensions. The shorter Sedona comes later this year, but the longer one, now available, stretches 202 inches over a 118.9-inch wheelbase. That's 1.5 inches longer overall, with a 0.4-inch-shorter wheelbase, than Dodge's Grand Caravan. It's also close enough to the Toyota Sienna and Honda Odyssey that the differences are academic.
This '06 Sedona is nearly eight inches longer and 400 pounds lighter now, Kia says. That's the result of a diet that includes a steel unibody structure and an all-aluminum 3.8-liter DOHC 24-valve V-6. At about 4400 pounds, the front-drive Sedona LX is no featherweight, but it's about the same as an Odyssey.
Thanks in part to continuously variable valve timing, the new engine carries a rating of 244 horsepower at 6000 rpm and 253 pound-feet of torque at 3500 rpm when operating on premium-grade fuel. That's the same horsepower rating the Odyssey's 3.5-liter V-6 carries, and the Honda's lower 240 pound-feet of torque comes at a zingy 5000 rpm. The Sedona's only transmission is a new five-speed automatic with Kia's "Sportmatic" manual shifting scheme. That feature should come in handy if Kia decides to start a spec-Sedona racing series.
The Sedona looks like a sharper-edged Odyssey with some 2002 Nissan Quest in the nose-it's yet another blandly handsome anonybox. It drives like an Odyssey, too, the engine whirring along quietly while supplying decent thrust, the transmission shifting almost imperceptibly, and the strut-front and multilink-rear suspension isolating out the worst road divots while keeping the van from wallowing over its P225/70R-16 Hankook (on the LX) or P235/60R-17 Michelin (on the EX) tires. The rack-and-pinion steering is neither particularly communicative nor particularly numb, the disc brakes come standard with ABS, the traction- and stability-control systems-also standard-aren't overly intrusive, and there's not much wind or tire noise.
The seven-passenger interior, meanwhile, is similar to the Sienna's. As in that Toyota, the third-row seat is split 60/40 and each section individually folds flush into a well in the floor using two triggering straps. The Sedona's two second-row captain's chairs work just like the Sienna's, tumbling forward in one motion for access to the rearmost seat and coming out in the least clever way possible: a hernia grunt heave up and out. The dash design is similar to the Toyota's, too, with the shifter plopped into the lower-left corner of the center stack beneath the audio and HVAC controls and the straightforward instrumentation in a binnacle in front of the driver.
In some ways-the EX's power-seat controls on the door and the vent-window controls for the third-row passengers, for example-the Sedona's interior is better than the Sienna's. In others-the dinky and indistinct ceiling console buttons to control the EX's power-sliding doors and sunroof or the fact that the second-row seats can't be moved closer together (or farther apart)-it's clearly behind. Also, the phony-wood trim on the EX dash looks as if it were peeled off the side of an old Jeep Grand Wagoneer, and some interior plastic pieces have an 800-grit coarseness to them. The Sienna's smoother panels are, on the other hand, useless for finish carpentry.
The new Sedona has everything a minivan must: a solid drivetrain, enough optional electronic gadgetry to narcotize the kiddies on trips, side windows that roll down, lots of cup holders, an optional power liftgate, and standard airbags in front and all along the sides. The drivetrain is refined and powerful, the chassis is well-sorted, and there's plenty of room for plenty of stuff.
Sure, the Sedona has a few minor rough edges, but a well-equipped LX starts at just $23,665, $2230 cheaper than a base Odyssey LX. The EX starts at $26,265, $2680 cheaper than an Odyssey EX. Now, the Odyssey is available with some options not available on the Sedona, such as a backup camera and, critically for some buyers, a navigation system. But the Sedona carries a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty, and no other minivan comes close to that.
That makes this Kia impossible to ignore.
