In all fairness, Kia has come a loooong way from that piece of crap Rio. And it was comfortable once it was up to speed. I remember it having a large dead pedal and driver's arm rest that seemed like they were from a more expensive car. My problem wasn't the power though, it was just the general shittiness of everything. It wasn't a charming shitty like an air cooled VW Beatle or Ford Festiva either. Its just, "If we make this cheap enough we can steel %.5 of Toyotas bushiness, which is like 500,000,000,000,000 won, dude!" kind of shitty. Like, Naki PS1 controller kind of shitty. The sheet metal in the trunk deck, for example, was so thin and semi-formed I actually cut myself on it while loading the trunk. It also doesn't like being driven through the mountains with more than two people in it.
My question though is why anyone would own any Korean car except for the Genesis coupe. They are basically unlicensed knock-offs of of other cars, usually Hondas. If the $3000 difference in price is a make or break factor in so far as payments (in which case, you shouldn't probably have a car loan anyway, but that's another matter) I'd rather just have a two year old version of the Honda.
When I buy a car, I intend (have failed every time so far) to keep it for the rest of my life. It being brand new today is temporary. If I could stand to own an SUV for 10 seconds, I'd so much rather have a 6 year old Honda Element for half of what a new Kia cost. In 10 years the Element will still be a kick-ass little truck/car/box thing, and the Kia...it will probably have already been recycled by then because nobody really will love it enough to replace the automatic transmission in it when it eventually goes.
As usually, I just like cars too much.
