Korean cars sure have come a long way, haven’t they? My sister just bought a brand new Hyundai i30 (Elantra GT) that, even at the end of its generation, is still earning plaudits from the Australian motoring press. The build quality is superb, the interior stylish and quiet, the drive smooth, and the doors close with a solid ‘thunk’. While she had a mid-1990s Excel (Accent) many years ago that was alright, she also had a first-generation Kia Rio that was absolute garbage. I loathed that Rio so much that I’m going to struggle to say one nice thing about it. Let’s see how you all manage.
Oh, the Rio. Cheap and cheerless, the first Rio was Kia’s first homegrown subcompact after years of using Mazda castoffs. With the cheapest, nastiest interior I’ve ever sat in, a lack of performance and refinement, and a pervasive sense of cheapness, the Rio felt like a step down from my sister’s ’96 Excel. The Korean automakers were not equals then: Hyundai didn’t purchase a majority stake of Kia until 1998 and both Kia and Daewoo’s offerings always felt underdone compared to similarly-priced Hyundais. To Kia’s credit, they did attempt to style the Rio and the wagon-esque hatch was practical. Furthermore, despite the first Rio’s deficiencies, Kia committed to the nameplate and turned the Rio into a solidly competitive car by its third generation.
At the other end of the lineup, Kia had the 2002 Amanti. A typical, old-school Korean executive sedan, the Amanti looked luxurious inside and out. But to make it sufficiently quiet and smooth, Kia added weight and the Amanti was a porcine 4100 pounds, a whopping 600 pounds heavier than a Toyota Avalon. Despite the enduring popularity of cushy cars like the Buick LeSabre in the US, Kia tweaked the car’s handling compared to the Korean market model and yet reviewers found the Amanti still handled like a boat. With its Frankenstein’s Monster mish-mash of luxury sedan styling cues, the Amanti was ridiculed by many. It was an early bird special on wheels, right down to the price: feature for feature, the Amanti undercut the Avalon by around $4k.
The Daewoo Nubira is another car I’ve had experience with. My mother used to own one and, well, let’s get the good things out of the way first: it was cheap and it looked okay. On the outside, that is. The interior was a creaking, plasticky mess. The car crashed over bumps but ploughed through corners with severe body roll. The manual transmission was mediocre; the overall refinement was low.
The Daewoo Kalos is best known to North Americans as the Chevrolet Aveo. The Aveo receives a lot of scorn for its subpar performance, surprisingly poor gas mileage and cheap interior. But it was in a class of very few in North America, so try imagining how the car stacked up in Europe and other markets. Hint: not well. After a brief stint with Daewoo badges in Australia, General Motors sold it as the Holden Barina, replacing a rebadged Opel Corsa. There was outrage from many for what was seen as a hugely retrograde product decision but there were still many loyal Barina buyers out there. Perhaps the nicest thing about it, then, was its badge. Ultimately, the Kalos/Aveo/etc wasn’t a terrible car, it just wasn’t really very good.
The idea of recycling a competitive vehicle and then selling it at a lower price point is compelling. Production costs are amortized, buyers get a lot of car for their money – everyone’s a winner! Or are they? Case in point, the Daewoo Racer, another Daewoo sold under multiple brands and nameplates. North Americans will know this best as the Pontiac LeMans, an insulting marketing decision by General Motors to re-use a proud nameplate on a cheap, entry-level vehicle. The original donor car, the Opel Astra, was a good one. Somehow, South Korean production managed to turn it into a car with uninspiring dynamics and subpar quality and reliability. One nice thing? Well, it still looked good on the outside.
Hyundai doesn’t get a pass in this challenge. It’s easy to bash the original FWD Excel/Pony but it was so cheap that many overlooked its flaws. But what happens if you take the same car, put a slightly swoopier body on it and try to sell it as a sport coupe? The daftly-named SCoupe had the same base engine, the same poor ride quality, the same lack of handling resembling anything near “sporty”. A turbocharged 1.5 four-cylinder was offered, producing 115 hp and 123 ft-lbs of torque, but it was simply more power added to an underdone chassis. To the car’s credit, it gave small coupe buyers a tantalizingly low cost of entry into the segment.
There are no conditions this time around other than to simply say one nice thing. Anything. Still, I imagine this will be the most challenging edition yet of “Say One Nice Thing”.
The definitive one nice thing that can be said about Korean cars is the first sentence of your piece: they’ve come a long way. It’s difficult to overstate that point. The Koreans are flying (have flown…) along the learning curve at a pace that makes the Japanese of the 1970s and ’80s look positively poky.
If we’re confining our one nice thing to the bad old Korean cars, the cheap garbage they put out until (very roughly) a decade ago, then that’s easy, too: “They stopped making them”.
They learned from these mistakes.
Perhaps the best thing I’ve seen come out of Korea is the Hyundai. I remember when the Hyundai Excel was first offered here in the USA. I laughed when I first laid eyes on it. I thought it looked like a cheap imitation of what the Japanese were offering in the late eighties. Fast forward 30 years. Hyundai is still here, and although not as attractive as the Excel, are still offering quality cars.
In the working class parts of Canada, Hyundai has completely taken over from Chevy and Ford. If one wants a good car with a five year warranty and zero percent financing, it will come from Hyundai/Kia. Right now, they will finance a new car at 0% for 84 months.
Here’s a couple:
1. Back in 1989 I briefly shopped to an economy car before deciding that what I was driving was worth hanging onto. A local Pontiac dealer showed me one of those awful LeMans things. The Nice Thing-I didn’t buy it!
2. In 2007 a friend’s 90-something Maxima blew its transmission, requiring him to shop for a new car. He had lousy credit and was coming off a bad few years, so didn’t think he’d qualify for new car financing. A Chevy dealer got him financed on a brand new Aveo. The nice thing-My friend was very happy (at least for a while).
You know, I just saw an Amanti the other day for the first time in a while, and I thought as I watched it go by that it’s aged better than some other designs from that period.
My 2015 Rio 5 has surpassed every expectation I had in it. It is at least equal to anything it its class.
I was going to say that the Amanti looks okay from the firewall forward. Yeah, it’s clearly a ripoff of the W210 E-class, but the taller/narrower grille gives it something of its own character. 4100 lbs though? Egads. How does a car that size, without AWD, get so heavy?
And, as others have noted, the collective one good thing is “they got better.” I wouldn’t have even considered anything Korean up to the early 2000’s, if even then. But sometime in the late 90’s they went from “dreadful” to “sensible, if quite boring”. And then in the early-mid 2000’s, all of a sudden, they were producing competent cars, and in the later part of the decade, the styling and interiors caught up, and now I’d consider a Kia or Hyundai in the same breath as Toyota/Honda/Mazda/Nissan. In fact my wife drives a 2012 Kia Forte Koup, the only car I’ve ever bought brand-new and one we chose over a ’12 Civic coupe. The long-term (10+ year) reliability may still be something of a question, but that 100K warranty is an awful lot of security until then. And we’ve barely even needed it (1 warranty service visit in almost 6 years, that for a component tweeter speaker that popped out of its mounting, quite the minor issue.)
Of all the small cars I drove, the Rio was by far the best driving, and the most fun.
I was wondering the same about the weight, I would have pegged them at 3200lbs at their heaviest from my eye scale.
Another Kia family here: The wife has an ’06 Spectra, and we’ve got an ’08 Sedona. Very happy with both, reliability has been good, if anything slightly better than my ’05 Scion xB.
Couple that with a dealership service department that has treated us like we’re driving something a lot more expensive, and this fall’s planned car hunt has a Soul as the first (and planned) choice for the wife. Assuming I go with a hybrid/plug-in for my next car, I’ll be looking for a used Optima.
Haven’t had this good a car experience since the 90’s when a very close friend of mine was the local Dodge dealer, ensuring that was about the only brand I drove during the entire decade.
I looked at an Amanti at the dealership. It had a rear bench covered in leather and I think it was probably the nicest, most comfortable car seat I’ve ever sat in.
Warranty. I forget just when Hyundai/Kia decided to put its money where its mouth was, but that was the turning point. In 2011, the Sedona I looked at was clearly from the “OK but not spectacular” school of Korean vehicle design, but they were willing to back it with an excellent warranty.
I did not even cross-shop Chrysler minivans, which I could probably have bought as cheaply through incentives. But the 3.6 V6 was still new enough that I was a little queasy, given some of Chrysler’s recent engine history. Had they offered a warranty like Kia’s, I might have at least looked seriously. As it was, between two unknowns, take the one with the best backing.
When I went shopping this past fall I was pretty surprised that the Kia dealer was asking more for the Sedona than Honda was asking for the Odyssey. A Honda discounted but not a Kia? Perhaps it was just my timing but who would have thought that 10 years ago? The new Sedona is quite nice from the driver’s seat but the rest of its interior is still lacking compared to the competition IMO.
Build the product right, and it won’t cost you anything to offer a long warranty. Plus it makes the savvy buyer wonder why the opposition won’t back their products to a similar degree.
The SCoupe is still a cleanly-styled car IMHO and I wonder when some Hyundai enthusiast will locate one and swap in a more modern Hyundai engine and fix the suspension.
When my Honda Civic was being serviced, I was given a “loaner”, as there were no shuttle drivers to drive me to and from work. The car I was given was a 3-4 year old Kia Sephia, a 1st generation model. I actually liked it and even gave serious thought to trading my Civic for it or buying the Sephia as a 2nd car. The 2nd generation Sephia was a step backwards, as far as I was concerned.
I am amazed to find that the Amati weighed so much more than the Avalon, but that seemed to be a “problem” for most of Kia’s models. Unfortunately, that extra weight probably directly affected fuel economy as Korean cars, until recently, were rarely as economical as a Japanese car with a similar sized engine.
iirc, the first generation Sephia, like the 90s Escort, shared it’s underpinnings with the 90s Protege. I remember looking at the rear suspension of a Sephia and thinking it looked identical to the Escort I owned at the time. I think the Sephia’s engine was based on the twin cam Mazda 1.8, rather than the Escort’s 1.9L vibration and noise generator.
At least they use model names instead of alphanumerics.
One nice thing to say? Well, I’ll just quote article: “Korean cars have come a long way”. 😉
Say nice things about Korean cars, especially earlier ones? OK. I was quite taken by the Kia Rio Cinco, especially after the front end and interior refresh in 03. At that time, small hatchbacks and wagons were very thin in the market, and I appreciated Kia not only offering one, but making a rather attractive entry. Reportedly, the Rio of that generation shared it’s platform with the earlier Ford Aspire, so my enthusiasm may be more tempered had I driven one.
Another that I have some affection for: 1999 Hyundai Accent. I was in the market for a winter car. The local dealer had a new, early 99 red base Accent hatchback for iirc $8,000. Crank windows, no A/C, manual trans, manual steering.
Not as stylish as the 03 Cinco, but this one I did get some windshield time in, and found virtue. Unlike the Rio, the Accent of the 90s had a real independent rear suspension and it rode quite comfortably on the dealer’s carefully selected test drive route. The 12 valve Mitsu based engine had better midrange torque than my 98 Civic and pulled hills without downshifting. The clutch was as smooth as butter.
That Accent had another feature: Hyundai sprayed the underside of their cars with cosmoline as a rust inhibitor during their trip to the US. Some of the cosmoline inevitably landed on the exhaust pipe. I don’t recall how many miles that Accent had on it when I drove it, but there was still pleny of cosmoline on the pipe, as the smell of burning tennis shoes engulfed the car when I parked it at the end of the test drive.
Ultimately, the Accent was a bit too tight in headroom, so I ended up paying more for a scruffy, high mileage, CPO 97 Civic.
I remember a summer night around 2004-2005, there was heavy rain and I was stuck behind an almost new Kia Rio just like the one in the first picture that was stalled at an intersection where I also wanted to turn left. An old couple was inside the car and they couldn’t restart it. I offered to push their car in a shopping center parking lot next to this intersection and let the old man steered it. By the time I got back to my ’65 Buick Wildcat I was completely wet but at least my 40 years older car ran fine!
I wondered if these were still as crappy as the 1980s and 1990s Korean cars that my grandfather had or if they were even worse! At least the following generations seemed much better. My uncle has a ’09 Rio and he didn’t have any problem with it.
Our experiences with the Nubira are polar opposites. I drove one as a loaner for several weeks and I was quite impressed with the quality of that car. It had a solid feel to it when opening/closing doors or the trunk, operating levers etc. It had surprising power and handled quite well for the type of vehicle that it was. I actually considered buying a more lavishly optioned example than the loaner, which was on the dealers lot, as a second vehicle.
Being favorably impressed by the Accent, when a friend was in town over the holidays, and mentioned he had never looked at a Hyundai at close range, we stopped by the local dealer after lunch. He was impressed with the value proposition they offered.
A couple years later, Mike’s old Olds died, and he scored a new 03 or 04 Elantra sedan for an impossibly low price, something like $12,000.
He didn’t get to drive the Elantra much. He worked at home while his wife commuted to downtown Chicago, and his wife kept taking the Elantra, because she preferred it to her own Pontiac.
Nope, can’t say anything good about the Kia Rio. My partner had one, a 2002 wagon that he bought when it was about 4 yrs old with low mileage. Maybe the worst. Car. Ever. Maybe even worse than my ’87 VW Jetta POS, and that’s saying a lot. Couple that with atrocious dealer service and neither of us will touch Kias with a 20-ft pole.
In 1995 I had a Lantra (as they were called in Europe after Lotus complained about possible confusion with the Elan) hire car. It must have been a run-out model as a colleague had hired the next generation one. As such it was ‘loaded’ with big wheels (must have been all of 14″ in those days) spoilers and most importantly air con, which was unheard of in a car of that size in the UK at the time. In the middle of a heatwave it was the car everyone wanted to ride in that week.
I rented a Hyundai Accent/Excel to get home from work 450km for my weekend off the car came from rent a dent so it was far from pristine but turned out to be a ball to drive above our pathetic speed limit where its fun to do so, I enjoyed the trip far more than the same done in a new Nissan Tiida and a six month old Corolla both of which had bigger engines.
I always thought these Elantra GT’s were nicely styled…
Me too. But I was kicking tires on a Sunday circa 2003-04 and there was a $1000 “market adjustment” tacked onto the list of each and every Elantra on the lot, at a time when there was a similar dollar amount off the Ford Focus – if that’s not the “market”, what is!?!
Which is why I won’t look at a Hyundai in Richmond. All the dealer’s here pull the same ADM crap, while the Kia dealers are willing to acknowledge sticker.
A nice thing? Well, everyone has to start from somewhere.
Yeah, I got nothin’….. Ok, maybe with these models featured in the piece.
Having said that though, I’ll echo what some others have said – the Korean cars have come a long way. The girl that cuts my hair traded her BMW in on a Sonata and likes it BETTER than the Beamer; a friend had a Hyundai Sante Fé that we’ve taken to the Terps games and it rode nice like a car, and never failed to get us to College Park on nights when it was snowing; and have you guys seen the new Equus? It’s like a freakin’ space ship inside!
Back in 1997, I test drove a Hyundai Tiburon with a stick shift and it was really fun to drive, but I decided to just buy another T-Bird. However, if it were now, a Genesis Coupe would be a nice little hot rod for my daily commute.
I commented to an Aussie Flickr contact that after the Suzuki -> Opel -> Daewoo swaps (and wasn’t there a swap *back* at some point?) by now more than any other car nameplate “Holden Barina” is more a job description than a lineage.
I have no experience with anything other than Hyundai. Begining with an ’86 Pony. 1.4 automatic. Bought it for a couple of hundred bucks for my brother to drive. It had a burnt exhaust valve on cyl #4 but that was easily and cheaply fixed. It was a great car if you were not in a hurry to get there. Left turns in traffic were white knuckle nailbiters and one could eventually get used to what felt like 10 turns lock to lock on the steering. Not really but that’s what it seemed like. My mother eventually owned that car. For some reason she always wanted a Hyundai Pony. We thought it would be a good fit since she was never known to drive fast at any time in her life. She complained about how slow it was.
I also drove the carpool for work in a brand spanking new ’87 Hyundai Excel. The owner wanted the travel bonus but didn’t like driving long distances. It had an Automatic with air conditioning and would nearly grind to a stop on long inclines. I would shut the a/c off at the bottom of hills and we all laughed out loud with the windows down chanting “I think I can. I think I can…” until the crest of the hill when the a/c came back on and all the windows rolled up again amid chears of joy and much celebration. Yes the car’s owner was in on the fun.
I never thought about Hyundai again until 2009 when I test drove an ’04 Accent 5spd, a/c and power everything. The used car market had taken a dive and I talked cash and walked away with an amazing deal on this 72K km car. What an absolute joy to drive. I picked up a new dishwasher once and with the seats folded down the hatch closed. No problem! The sales guy couldn’t believe it. Sure it handled like an econobox but it reminded me so much of the ’77 Honda Civic. It was quick off the line and I could light up the tires easily. It drove very much like the Honda did except it didn’t rattle, squeak or buck like a rodeo bull on our rough streets. I sold it on after a Silverado ran over it’s front end. Buckled the hood and sheared the bumper off in a downward direction. Other than that is was fine and lives on with the new owner. With a few new parts naturally.
Hyundai really came a long way from their wretched beginings. I even recomended them to people who eventually became loyal Hyundai customers. Me. I bought a Nissan.
Over the past six years or so, I’ve seen the follwing changes in our employee parking lot at work:
Ford Windstar—Kia Sportage
Ford Explorer–Kia Sportage
Dodge Diplomat–Hyundai Sonata
Mercury Montego–Hyundai Elantra
Toyota Corolla–Hyundai Elantra
Chevy Trailblazer–Hyundai Santa Fe
Chrysler Town and Country–Hyundai Tucson
Plymouth Acclaim–Hyundai Elantra
Honda CRV–Kia Sportage
Kia Rio–Honda Accord
Chevy Impala–Hyundai Veracruz
The people did not change but their personal vehicles sure did.
A friend bought a new Rio, all I can say is the paint was shiny when it was new.
I wanted to correct a small error in an otherwise well written article. The Pontiac LeMans was based on the Opel Kadett, not the Astra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo_LeMans
Lets see here:
The Rio: I at least like it’s relatively clean and easy to read gauges.
The Amanti: I always thought the Amanti was only pretending to be a luxury car just by looking like one. I guess one nice thing is that it’s still probably put together better than the Mercedes models that it’s trying to imitate.
The Daewoo: I honestly don’t have any experience with these. Been a few years since I’ve seen one on the road.
The Aveo: As a tall person, the design was very practical with lots of headroom for such a small car. Visibility is also pretty good.
The LeMans: When I was in high school, a friend’s mom had one of these. We hated the car and everything it stood for and beat on it mercilessly. It managed to hold up well and survive these years of abuse, and was eventually given to my friend’s little sister where it provided reliable transportation for quite some time after. These don’t seem to have a very good reputation, but I have to begrudgingly respect the one example I knew.
actually probably the easiest of the say one nice things yet!
Hyundai – when the ponys hit Canada in 84-85 I remember the people who bought them singing their praises for being a good simple reliable car. I actually priced one out myself but the headroom killed it for me
yes the stellars were mechanical disasters but at the time I was impressed at at how much luxury you received at such a modest price.
a buddy who was a died in the wool American fan,(monte carlo, beretta,tbird and grand am) just bought a new sonata and I was amazed at how comfortable and solid it felt.
Kia – looked at an amati myself and it felt(and looked) much like my aunts jag s-type at a LOT less money.
drive a Sedona van where I volunteer. gets beat to death and yet after 8 years still runs good and no rust.( something in the true north strong and salty )
the kia soul-definitely so cute it looks like it has one
optima. find something with that sexy a style in the same price range. it one of the very few vehicle I’ve seen the looks good in EVERY colour!
Actually, OK, I thought of a substantive nice thing to say: the Amanti was first to market with LED front turn signals. There might’ve been an earlier arrival at that point in the Japanese or Korean markets, but US/Europe/rest-of-world, it was the Amanti/Magentis.
The good thing about Korean cars is that they serve as a lesson to those who would listen, a lesson as to how one can learn, change and succeed. Whether GM, FCA and VW are capable of listening is another matter.
Personally though when I started searching for a car to replace my 92 Escort last year, I could not quite bring myself to looking at the Koreans – to me there’s still something missing; when I look at a Korean car I always get the feeling it is more an appliance than a car – it is as if the people producing it would be just as happy if they had to make a dish washer, and that to me is a definite no-no. The same used to apply to Japanese cars in the beginning. To me, it is the price you pay when you create a motor industry from scratch in a country which has no vehicular history whatever, and it would take quite some time before the Koreans get over that (if at all, in light of the hostile way in which they consider motor racing and car modifications). Same, of course, applies to Chinese cars but the Chinese have only just started, so…
The later Kias look darn nice. They’ve really done a great job on styling. And, the new ones are reliable. A late model Korean mid-sizer like an Optima really is a pretty solid option now. Considering where they were 25 years ago, Kia/Hyundai has to be one of the best turnarounds ever.
The Daewoo Kalos is actually kind of interesting-looking. I’ve always thought the Hyundai Scoupe was moderately attractive as well. Beyond that, well…
One nice thing to say, about those mundane Korean appliances…. Uh…..
I guess it beats walking?
Spoken like someone who has pointedly never driven one.
Toss up with biking though.
I’ve had four Hyundais. Two accents. An Elantra. And a sonata.
All were great cars. Even in the snow when I was in Utah.
I’m Leary of anything that says daewoo. I had an Aveo as a rental. Not great for a long trip. But not the worst car I’ve seen. That’s as nice as I can be.
I’ll go back earlier to say good things about Kia. I had a 1990 Ford Festiva, which was my first introduction to the manufacturer. Other than the stock tyres (Yokohamas that I swear were made of bakelite and were horrible in the wet), the car was well built, peppy, handled well enough that I didn’t miss the Fiestas and Escorts I’d had previously.
When Maggie was looking for something to replace her completely clapped out Explorer, and we found her Spectra at the local buy-here/pay-here lot, it was memories of that Festiva that got me to take the Spectra seriously.
Three years later, we have no regrets.
I was the first in the family to buy something other than a Toyota. I have a 2008 KIA Spectra sedan with a stick. Right now = 125k. No major problems at all. One wiring problem with headlights in cold weather.
32+ mpg usually up to 40mpg if im careful. Sporty handling esp after a lowering and a strut bar. Will howl in fast corners but still hangs on 🙂
More than once here on CC I’ve sung the praises of one of the most unloved cars ever sold in North America, the Daewoo Pontiac Lemans. My ex-wife had a ’93 sedan (her first new car) for ten years and it served us well for the first few years of our marriage. It never left us stranded, nor her dad after we gave it to him to use as an “airport” car when he became a flight attendant.
OTOH, it rattled and squeaked from day one, it was dangerously slow when merging into freeway traffic, (60hp out of 4 cylinders+a/c+an automatic – you do the math!) and nearly every component of the HVAC system had to be replaced at least once. No matter what, the Jellybean (my nickname for it was “Evinrude” to which she took great offense!) just kept on running.
Not THE Jellybean, but an identical one…..
I can assure you it had more than 60 HP. A 1.6 Family 2 produces at least 90.
How about we split the difference between you two? The US LeMans had 74 hp.
One nice thing: it actually had a greenhouse!
I’ve posted elsewhere on this, but my first car in Korea was a ’92 LeMans GTE similar to below. It was a top-line version with power everything, alloys, etc. Yes it had questionable components that broke a lot. However, the Koreans had yet to expunge the essential German-ness of it. It handled relatively well, especially compared to used Excel in the same price range. Faster, too. The best part, I bought a 5 year old car for $850, and drove the whee out of it. The LeMans shortcomings stemmed from the poor quality locally produced electrical and HVAC components. The motor was bulletproof, and the body was more solid than a Hyundai.
Drove a Daewoo Nubira as a rental several years ago in Utah. Very roomy and has lots of visibility. The engine though was really thrashy and it had a very cheap looking interior. This was just about the time the Daewoo empire had imploded, the car business was being sold to GM, and the patriarch, Kim Woo-chung, was a fugitive on the run.
Again, today, though I am really impressed with how Hyundai/Kia have come about. The Sonata is really competitive in the most competitive car segment in the USA. And they’re making big leaps in expanding in other global markets as well.
My brother has a ’98 KIA Sportage he never drives. Bought new, has right now 23k on the clock. It has been a pile. I don’t blame him for not driving it, I wouldn’t trust it either. So I can’t “Say one nice thing” other than I love the Korean supermarket down the street from me. ( H-Mart in Tigard) So many different and weird types of fish, my friend Doug referrers to it as the bait shop. And you haven’t had real ramen noodles if the water amount on the package isn’t listed in cc’s or ml’s.
“One nice thing”.
Every Korean Hyundai or Kia I ever sat in had right-hand drive switchgear. European manufacturers can’t seem to manage this – either they’re not clever enough or they don’t give a sh!t. They think bastardised ergonomics are good enough- move the pedals and steering wheel over and the rest will do.
My buddy had a Hyundai pony back in the ninties. It made my other buddy’s chevette seem like a Cadillac, I swear the door cards were cardboard and it had holes in the floor as well as coat hangers to hold up the noisy muffler. He got years of service despite the clouds of blue smoke it would blow from the tailpipe. I would have never recommended a Korean car but a couple of years ago helping a friend find a good used car we found a mid 2000 tyburion that was well priced and had a 5 speed. He has done well with it pretty much regular maintenance and gas and oil has been all it has required. The new models have good looks and seem well built. I don’t know if I would ever own one but never say never…
Just scrapped a 2002 Rio auto-air after 15 years of urban travel to work. Dead reliable and boring. Probable the lowest cost car I have ever owned. This is why people drove them, wanted a Corolla but saved thousands when 5 years old by buying Rio.
In my experience, I’ve generally found Hyundais and Kias to be logically laid out and easy to work on. Similar to Hondas. This might only pertain to models from the past twenty years, I have no experience with the older cars. Are there any of those even alive anymore?
I worked at Win Kelly Chevrolet Isuzu when they got a Kia franchise and set up shop in the next building. One of my jobs was to PDI (Pre Delivery Inspection) each Kia that arrived. In the 2 years I was there, I drove several hundred Kia vehicles.
I liked the first generation Rio, Kia offered the Rio in many colors(such as Teal and light blue) and they bucked the trend of offering only Black, white and beige cars like most of the other car makers were.
The Rio Cinco wagon was my favorite of the early Kia offerings, It was small but was roomy. A lot of folks I know bought the Rio Cinco and all were happy with them.
I think Kia and Hyundai make great cars. I love the 2011-2015 Sorento. My best friend has a 2012 Sorento with the 6 speed manual trans.
I am a fan, as long as I can pay less for a Kia/Hyundai than a comparable Honda, which isn’t always the case anymore.
’01 Rio…120,000 miles in 2 years, donated it to someone who needed cheap wheels, NO issues,
’03 Rio, one of the kids finally killed it by overheating it when the aux fan quit, 180,000 miles, went to the dealer twice for piddly little warranty repairs.
’06 Sportage is in the fleet now, 145,000 miles, the paint on the hood is getting thin, but otherwise everything works, the perforated leather still looks great, it’s been in the family since new and it’s going strong. It might be the ugliest color ever…light greenish gold. The kids have been begging me to have it painted black…
The Rios were little tincans, but they were SO cheap, how could you go wrong? Reliability was fine, likely because there was nothing to break, they were a/c, 5 speed cars, and that’s IT, no other options.
bought a new 08 amanti during a dealer blow out sale just $20K. these stickered at about $37K. this was the lightly restyled version from the previous 04-06 models. less dorky styling cues. also used more aluminum so it was lighter and with 265HP does 0-60 in the 6.some sec. range. handling is a little better than 70s detroit big iron but not by much. it is though a soft quiet hiway cruiser with safety features, standard equipment and workmanship eons removed from land yachts of the past. i never had an issue with the looks of the car. a lot of people seem to deride it on forums. in silver it’s traditionally formal looking. no major issues. just 1 in warranty repair for a squeaky idler pulley and a recall for a brake light switch. i’ve noticed amantis don’t seem to rust as other cars of its age do in my area. maybe they were built or rust treated a little better than the more common models?
Shared a Festiva with my cousin when we were roomates in DC. I could always find a parking space in any neighborhood in Washington that other cars couldn’t fit into. Now all those spaces are filled with Smart cars.