Wake up and smell the coffee!

You've all heard of the expression "wake up and smell the coffee". Well, I kind of feel like I have just done that. Let me explain...

You see, I've never really taken much notice of the company, Kia. Oh yes, I've driven one or two vehicles from them at various test fests which I attend, and I've tested plenty of cars from its sister company Hyundai, but I don't believe that I have actually ever driven a Kia product for longer than a few minutes at one time.

Strange that, eh? But you have to bear in mind that there are 100's of new vehicles/models released in Canada each year, and that's far too many for me to test drive each and every one, so I have to be a little selective.

Now obviously if I hear a bunch of hoo-ha about a certain vehicle, I'll phone the PR representative of the company and enquire if one is available to test. Sometimes, new products catch my eye whilst perusing the PR releases that we get each day and I go from there. Of course this is all fine, but occasionally products tend to slip through the net, and if I'm totally honest, that seems to have happened with me and the entire Kia brand!

Now, possibly it's because I've looked at a few of the vehicles in Kia's lineup and said, "Oh, that's just like the Hyundai such-n-such", and thought, what's the point seeing as I've already driven the Hyundai version? However, if that's what I did, then it was a big mistake on my part, because they are certainly not all the same!


It's what's on the inside that counts

Take my tester this week, the Kia Rondo EX V6 which was a wonderful surprise to me.

From the outside, it appears to slightly resemble its smaller stable-mate, the Spectra, which I get next. Yet it is much taller, longer, and basically a little larger all round, and yet when you poke your head through the door, you realize just how much bigger it actually is.

Yes, the Rondo seems to fit into a category all its own. It's like a crossover between a station wagon and a minivan, I guess, but with an awful lot of car thrown in with it. How else could you describe a car-looking mode of transportation, with a hatch-back and room for 7 people? (I won't call it a 7 passenger vehicle, as one of my friends recently pointed out to me that in the dictionary, the driver is not considered to be a passenger, therefore it either has seating for 7, or is a 6 passenger vehicle).

However, whatever way you look at it, I was totally amazed when I saw the 3rd row seating in such a relatively small vehicle, I even stood back and studied the outside for a while trying to figure out how they jammed all those seats in there!

It appears to me as if Kia has stumbled onto something that many have been missing, the fact that just because we occasionally require seating for 7, it doesn't necessarily follow that we need room for all their luggage as well.

Pretty much common sense when you think about it. Most owners only need that extra row of seats occasionally, and then mostly for short little trips with the kids and their friends. So if it's only a quick jaunt to the local ice cream parlor and not the ice rink, then do you need to carry much else other than the kids?

To explain that a little better, in my past life I ran a Land Rover service centre. A lot of my customers owned 7 seater Discovery models, and yet, very few of them ever had the rear jump seats down. In fact, on many of them, when I had to get to the rear light units to change a bulb, the jump seats were pretty much seized through lack of use.

Basically, a lot of buyers go for the extra seating just in case they need it, not because they truly do. Follow that thinking through and I believe that if you genuinely need room for 7, then purchase a minivan or a large SUV. If however, you simply want the security of knowing that you could carry more bodies should you need to, then I see the Kia Rondo as being right up your street!