First Drive Review
Carwise, South Korea is in the smorgasbord business. All you can eat for less! Japan started there, too, in the '60s, pouring on the features and moving the iron at low, low, discount prices. It's a stage underdeveloped countries go through on their way to becoming respected industrial powers.
Kia, now a wholly owned appendage of another Korean, Hyundai, is still on wobbly legs as a U.S. brand, and we've seen disturbing quality lapses in Kia test cars over the past several years. But it's learning fast - dazzlingly fast, judging from this all-new minivan. The Sedona is a no-excuses thrust into the family-hauler market where Caravans, Windstars, Odysseys, and Siennas shuttle to schools and malls. Kia previewed a dozen early-production samples in Sedona, Arizona (you expected Sonoma, California, maybe?) in July, and invited the automotive press to do its darnedest.
Looks as though Kia's smorgasbord days are about over. The Sedona is more like fine dining (well, if you're open to thinking any minivan could taste good).
Make that fine dining at fast-food prices. The base LX version starts at $19,590, including a 3.5-liter twin-cam V-6, a five-speed automatic, a driver-side eight-way-adjustable seat with lumbar support, front power windows, power mirrors and locks, dual A/C, cruise control, a tilting column, rear privacy glass, three rows of seats, a six-speaker AM/FM/cassette, eight cup holders, and about eleventeen miscellaneous storage nooks. Kia says the uplevel EX model will max out at $24,100 with a full load of features, including a CD player, leather seats, a roof rack, ABS, a sunroof, power rear quarter-windows, and body-colored everything that hasn't been chromed.
Yes, it's still the all-you-can-eat-for-less idea, but the execution is surprisingly slick.
Unlike Honda's and Mazda's disappear-into-the-floor, third-row seat, nothing about the Sedona scores as a brilliant innovation. Instead, the whole package seems agreeable, exceptionally handy, and, somehow, familiar. Have we been driving this thing for years, or just wishing we had?
The Sedona is Toyota Sienna-sized, so close you'll need a micrometer to distinguish them. It's available in one length only - 194.1 inches - which deftly positions it halfway between the shorty Detroiters and their stretcher siblings. The platform is front-wheel drive and not yet shared by any Hyundai model. The exterior is, again, familiar, kind of UMV (universal minivan) but pleasing from every angle and nicely detailed. The EX alloy wheels are the best-looking in the category.
