Courtesy of Kia
With the high-performance variant of the new K5 sedan, Kia aims to achieve luxury sports sedans such as the BMW 3-series and Audi A4.
Stinson Carter
Design and elegance
Kia has some of the best automotive designers in the world working in creative and leadership roles – including those with the lineage of Audi, BMW, Lamborghini and Bentley – and you feel the talent of this deep seat when you first look at the K5 silhouette.
There is definitely a little bit of Audi DNA in the shape of the K5 tail, which looks like the smaller Audi A7. I was surprised when my neighbor, who had a loaded new Audi A4, came to swoon over the K5. And I was even more surprised when I took her to visit a relative who buys a new six-digit sports car every six months, and found him alone in his driveway, admiring it.
The K5 is a nice car in any trim level, but the GT’s visual enhancements, which include 19-inch wheels with Pirelli tires, a more aggressive front grille, a rear spoiler, and dual quad-head exhausts give the GT an aggressive character on its own before it starts running the engine.
Stinson Carter
Interior Design
Kia turns the cabin around the driver, pointing the screen and buttons toward the driver’s seat the way you see it in a sports car. Sure, it’s better not to sit at 90 degrees on the controls of your dashboard, but it also makes passengers feel a bit less of a look outside. For example, one of the small side effects of reorienting the cockpit towards the driver in the K5 is the presence of a small angled bulkhead on the passenger side of the center console that the passenger’s left knee presses. It’s simple, but if you remove those aesthetic design details it will give the passenger – at least one on the longer side – a much more comfortable ride. Shape and function generally match well with the K5, so this small contrast between the two stood out.
Courtesy of Kia
Designers have made sure that the surfaces touched by the driver feel luxurious; Like the flat-bottom leather steering wheel, leather-wrapped transmission, metal knobs and climate control switches, and heated and ventilated seats. Looking at the steering wheel, I couldn’t help but wish it had the new Kia badge. The new Kia logo will be a noticeable visual upgrade, as it makes its way onto the production line.
On a nine-hour round trip with a family of four, the K5 felt spacious and comfortable on the inside. The panoramic sunroof is relatively huge, like the trunk, which was so unexpectedly large that it felt like it somehow managed to hide the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car in the back.
Stinson Carter
Driving experience
Kia states that the GT is 0.28 seconds faster from zero to 60 than the 2020 BMW 330i, with a top speed of a quarter mile, and also better angle handling than BMW. This is a great comparison, although in a real-world scenario I doubt anyone would drive the two cars side by side and come out as if they had any decisive performance advantage over the 3-Series. But the fact that KIA prepared this live test on the road shows the audience they are looking for with the GT. . And the fact that the K5 has done so well leaves no doubt that Kia is gaining ground in the legacy brands with luxury performance.
Start it up, and the inline four-cylinder 290hp has such a low sound and a throaty feel I didn’t expect. Almost Italian in intonation. And with 311 lb-ft of torque, take the K5 on a highway and you’ll find yourself cruising through traffic with remarkable agility – made better thanks to Pirelli tires. While driving around town, you notice the moment you step away from the stop sign that the K5 is giving off early torque at 1,650 rpm. But in Sport + mode, where traction control is disabled, the wheels can also start spinning at a much lower speed than you expect. I would normally reserve a K5 for regular city driving sports as a result. (Not that I didn’t enjoy spinning.)
Excellent gas mileage in the K5. I love driving adrenaline press fleet vehicles more than gas mileage, but I still struggle to make an impact on my 15.8 gallon GT tank. In nearly five hundred miles of highway driving, the K5 GT didn’t ask for much, and delivered anything I asked of it.
Stinson Carter
Final thoughts
With a base price of about $ 11,000 less than the base BMW 3-series model, and about $ 8,500 less than the base Audi A4, the K5 GT delivers on its promise of high performance at a feasible price. But I dare that the success of the K5 may hinge on the question of whether the purchase of a sports sedan is, in and of itself, a practical purchase or a case purchase.
Although I don’t necessarily think the K5 GT will attract loyal fans of the 3-Series or A4 series apart from BMW and Audi, I think it will attract new and young buyers of adulthood in this era of small brands, who care more about the features and value of brand loyalty. Commercial. These are the same people who have never heard of Kickstarter brand shoes for the tannery that made leather. Or buy a watch from Etsy for the automatic movement inside, rather than the name-dial. So, for a carmaker notoriously at offering lots of materials and lowering prices, the Kia K5 GT is another reason – like Telluride, Sorento and Stinger before it – why time is on their side.
Stinson Carter
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