This car entered the family stable just before Christmas. It is my youngest son’s first new car, succeeding his previous ride, a 2004 Honda Civic. He got that Civic pre-owned, and got more than ten years of hard driving out of it. Since he had occasion to borrow my Crossover-Compact-Light-Truck for a few days, I swapped with him. (I hate the SUV acronym because the thing is not really sporty, it has less utility than my old minivan, and the V should be more accurately descriptive – it is after all a light truck).
I found this Forte’s performance to be adequate. It is a lightweight car and the 2.0 L engine deported itself nicely. On line reviews are not quite as favourable. The 147 HP mill is coupled with what I would call a CVT transmission, although Kia calls it an “IVT” (infinitely variable transmission). It took me a few kilometres to realize I was not sensing shift points on the tachometer and that it was not shifting in the traditional sense. The IVT has a gear ratio of 2.68:1.0 from 1st through 7th gear, or speed, if you will. The drive train has only to move 2720 pounds, (about 100 pounds more than the old Civic) but it is not built to win any drag races after all. I did coax some kick-down acceleration driving at 100 km/h, and it ranged up to about 4000 RPM and felt like it shifted gears. 132 pound-feet of torque are provided. (I recall that this measurement used to be provided in foot – pounds. I don’t know what the difference is.)
The photos of the car in its unshiny condition were a result of driving it in salty slushy road conditions. It went for its first annual rustproofing treatment this day.
The name Kia is is roughly translated as “to come out of the east”. The company dates back to 1944 when it began in the steel tubing and bicycle parts business. It was known as the Kyungsung Precision Industry but changed its name to Kia in 1952. Kia got into the car business in the 1970s. Hyundai owns approximately 33% of Kia, and Kia in turn owns several subsidiaries of Hyundai.
As you can see, the brand has evolved quite significantly over the years. The three wheeler seems to be a motorcycle derivative.
Perhaps fifteen years ago a colleague won some money in a lottery and decided to replace their car. They went from a 1990s Imperial to a Kia Sportage compact crossover. To say that the whispers in the room were deafening would be an understatement. Not that it wasn’t time to get rid of the sedan, but opinions of the Kia brand were not positive to say the least. Notwithstanding, the Sportage ran well and provided a number of years of good service.
I didn’t get a photo of our featured vehicle through the windshield, but here is the driver’s view of the controls. The windshield wipers wiped the windshield in nice right to left sweeps. When using the spray cleaner, it gave only the required number of wipes unlike my compact light truck (OK it’s an Escape) that always has that annoying extra swipe that is not needed and often makes it worse. With all the salt and slop on the road I got nice clean windows.
The turning radius was very nice and tight and the shift back-and-forth between reverse and drive were quite sharp and crisp as opposed to the slushy sense I get on my Escape. I’d compare it favourably with a Hyundai Elantra that is also in the family fleet. (Note those are not the floor mats specifically for this car, they were absconded from another vehicle for winter duty.)
The Blindspot system (why does everything on a car need to be a “system” nowadays?) warned me of impending disaster with cars beside me. However, it beeped at me annoyingly and distractingly when I changed lanes when in its opinion I was too close to do so. After getting used to the distraction I pushed it a bit to see if I could detect a threshold point for the warning, but I didn’t want to get too close for the sake of the car, my safety, and the fear of some cataclysmic beeping or sound warning me of the falling sky.
The radio / AV system allowed me to create new favourites easily, however when I was trying to select a station and was simultaneously going over a road bump it thought I was trying to scroll the screen instead of selecting the station thus diverting my attention.
I couldn’t see both sides of the back window through my rear view mirror, as my own headrest was blocking part of the view. I could have reclined my seat further or just glanced at the mirror at a different angle to remediate. I did find the seating position a bit low, and that aspect was not adjustable.
I was pleased that the outside mirror adjustments allowed me to go nice and wide with the mirrors. I like to eliminate blind spots by going real wide with the outside mirrors. After all, the car I am driving is the last one I need to see when changing lanes. Using this method, any approaching car from the rear and on either side moves from my rear view mirror, to the side mirror, to my peripheral vision. I can reliably use my side mirrors to execute lane changes without the need to ‘shoulder check’. A quick glance is all that is required. On any car I drive. Jim Kenzie, an auto journalist/engineer around these parts authored this method years ago, still advocates it today, and I have followed it without exception.
It has a good heating system which gave me lots of warmth once it warmed up. The weather here has been rather on the cold side, so any car that can provide warmth to its occupants gets good points. It took a good 8 to 10 kms before the temperature got up to the halfway mark and thus provided nice warm air in -7C temps (19F) outside. I partially compensated by using the electric seat heater (system).
The Forte had lots of nice options like lights above the vanity mirrors in the roof and not on the sun visors, cruise control, Bluetooth and all the latest Android Car Google Play Apple music gadgets. It did not seem to have GPS navigation that I could find, that must have been available on a higher trim level. Fold down rear seats are a must and these folded pretty flat. The Tire Pressure monitor system was unhappy as the mounted snow tires lacked sensors. Those are resident on the summer tires. On the subject of tires, the car does not come with a spare tire. This is a weight saving and a cost saving measure I’m sure. I think they gave my son a can of something to spray into the tire if a slow leak occurs. The car has ABS brakes, which came in handy on snow covered corners. Apparently my son tells me it has lane departure assist as well, which he quickly disabled. He reported that the system fought him a bit when road markings were either unclear or snow obscured. The last thing anyone wants is a car trying to think for you and taking action that is unwelcome and unnecessary.
Compared to the 70s when a compact car had equipment as options such as power steering and power brakes and sometimes an automatic transmission, economy cars today come with all the goodies.
Fuel consumption of 7.1 litres per 100 kms is pretty respectable for a compact car these days. On line reviews say it is one of the least thirsty compact cars on the road, at least in the gas engine world. The Forte provides at least a 10% improvement in gas consumption over the 2004 Civic. I think the conversion of 7.1 litres per 100 k is somewhere in the 35-40 mpg US gallon range.
Overall I am pleased that he selected this car, and I believe it will serve him well for some years to come.
In the “It’s a small world” category, I ran into the fellow who sold me my new 2001 Caravan, he now works at the dealer at which my son purchased this Kia. Small world indeed.
Postscript – in today’s paper, it was announced by AJAC (Automobile Journalists Association of Canada), that the 2019 Kia Forte won the Best Small Car in Canada award, as announced at the Montreal Auto Show. That would seem to follow the pattern established by the brand of winning various JD Power awards, and so on. It’s nice and reassuring to have industry wide authorities give recognition to the brand.
At this point, I would compare the KIA Forte to the AMC Rambler of yore. Both of them were basic, no-nonsense cars that were much better than many people were and are willing to admit.
I suppose the Forte is only no-nonsense in that the powertrain is very basic, and the styling is (refreshingly) straightforward and restrained. But it’s otherwise a very competent vehicle with competitive features and space.
However, Kia is preparing a Forte GT for release sometime this year, as a 2020. Much like the Stinger, the GT will be the top trim, and may have GT1 and GT2 submodels. I believe it’ll be the same 1.6T and 7-speed DCT powertrain that was in the old Forte5 SX and is in some of the sportier Hyundai models.
Black compact car with steel rims reminds me of Quebec, nice review Lee.
I recognized a rust proofing shop, I wonder about applying it over the salt though. I guess it’s better than nothing.
Winter tires without sensors – so annoying. Our Focus bings at us every startup and then on random occasions.
Being a late technology adapter I am still leery of CVT. I much prefer the 5-speed in our Focus.
Stay warm!
I think they gave it a good rinse first. Thanks!
In the KIA Buzz photo, the 1962, 1974 and 1986 vehicles are all Mazda designs.
The Sportage appears to be an extended rear-overhang version that was never sold in the US.
Even the Sportage (and other Kias of that period) had Mazda based engines.
We recently bought our first Kia – a Sedona minivan for the wife. I was not thrilled with it but she seems to like it so far. Only been a few months but it has been fine so far.
Ooooh, between you and Eric 703 and me, is the Sedona becoming second to the Miata as the favorite of CC contributors? 🙂
Not sure I’d call it a favourite … it gets the job done.
I do own a flotsam of other junk as compensation with the Innocenti, Acura TSX, beater Civic and twin cam Tercel.
Yes — it gets the job done. My #1 criteria was for a car to get the job done with little drama, and that it does.
We haven’t taken a long trip in our Sedona yet (we just bought it in October), but I’m anxious to do so. My biggest complaint so far is the big center console, but obviously I knew that was there when we bought it. The large open space between the seats in our 2010 Odyssey is much more useful.
Incidentally, my wife loves the Sedona, largely because she finds the driving position more comfortable than in any of our other cars. She’s relatively short (5’1″), and apparently the Sedona’s seat can adjust very low, which she says is more comfortable for short people’s legs (so they don’t dangle).
So it does justice to its name, Forte in Portuguese means strong. Here in Brazil his name is Kia Cerato, until 2015 its sales could go near to the Civic and Corolla, but since 2015 the import taxes skyrocket to 35% and now it almost vanished from the streets.
Looks a bit like a baby Stinger. Sharp car.
The delayed fourth-wipe when you run the windshield washer on FoMoCo vehicles is called “Courtesy Wipe.”
Boy, that’s sounds filthy.
Anyway, on the newer vehicles, you can turn it off. At least, you could do so on my 2014 Lincoln MKS. It was buried somewhere in the instrument panel LCD interface.
As for the 2.0-liter N/A Kia inline-4, I’m not impressed with it in my grandmother’s 2014 Kia Soul, but that car is very boxy. I imagine it would do better in a sleek sedan like the Forte.
I would call it the “annoying unnecessary usually messes up the window again without more washer fluid” wipe. Thanks Kyree
Good review, thanks. I was behind one the other day and found it interesting that they put the turn signals down low in the bumper, precisely where it would be most expensive to fix after a low speed parking lot bump that would otherwise go unfixed or perhaps just rubbed out with a little compound…Are the reversing lights down there as well now?
Can’t say for sure, but I will check.
Jim,
It took some digging and follow up but you are correct, the backup lights are in the bumper as well. Sorry for the late response.
The latest, freshly revised Forte sedan seems okay but I think the jury’s still out on Kia. I’m not real keen on CVTs and Kia’s reliability and quality is only mid-pack.
But they ‘are’ cheaper than the class leaders, and do come with a very good selection of standard equipment, even on the cheapest, lower-tier models. I think that includes Android Auto and Apple CarPlay which I surmise is supposed to take the place of GPS on most Fortes (I think you can only get ‘real’ integrated Nav which doesn’t rely on your smartphone on the highest trim Forte).
All things considered, the Forte does seem like a very good selection for a younger, first-time, new-car buyer. I actually like it better than the popular Soul.
Pound-foot/pound-feet is the unit of torque, and lb·ft is the correct way to abbreviate it. The Foot pound-force/foot pounds-force (properly ft·lbf, informally ft-lb) is a unit of work or energy. “Foot-pounds” is frequently misused to refer to torque.
See, yeah. I understand the intent of these kinds of “helpful” little features, but I wish they’d knock it the frack off; usually they’re just annoying. That extra-wipe-after-a-pause is one example (if washer fluid drips down from the top, I’ll flick the switch myself, thanks). Three others that gritched me in a rental Nissan Rogue recently: shift to Reverse and the side mirrors tip down. NO! I had them set correctly, and I wanted them to stay the hell where I put them! And the driver’s seat, likewise, moved back when I opened the door and forward when I closed it. Again, NO! That was not only unhelpful, it was creepy and disorientating. I set the goddamn seat where I wanted it, and I don’t appreciate the car second-guessing me in an effort to be “helpful”. Also, I just want to charge my phone, okeh? I don’t want the “infotainment system” (barf) to take it over. No, I really mean it: I don’t want the audio piped through the car’s speakers. I don’t want it deciding I must want to play music. Just leave the damn thing alone and charge it. Didn’t find a way of disabling any of these “helpful” features.
In other words, you adjust your mirrors correctly. So do I. That’s why it was so infuriating to have the car “helpfully” throw them out of adjustment “for” me while I was reversing.
You must be, like, old or something. It tests well with Millennials, soooooooo…
This is a really thorny problem in user-interface design: how to convey important information to drivers without distracting them immediately and/or jading them eventually. And you’ve touched on another tradeoff I’m not really onside with (like it matters): today’s vehicles have cameras and blind spot monitors and other suchlike: plus. They also have enormous, thick, raked windshield pillars, limo-dark “privacy glass”, high belt lines, slit windows, and high decks: minus. I’m no longer the brassy automotive luddite I once was, but I really miss the excellent 360° sight lines out of my ’62 Dodge Lancer. Today’s bulky pillars are for roof-crush resistance, but rollovers are rare and pedestrian hits are far too frequent; I think this is a bad trade that’s been made.
That, too! One of the first things I do in a rentcar parkade is remove the rear head restraints. Nobody’s going to ride back there while I’m driving, and the damn things block too much of the already-minimal view out the backglass. Nothing can be done about the front head restraints. They’re there for a good reason—I don’t miss the bench in the Lancer—but they’ve become very intrusive, unadjustably shoving one’s head uncomfortably forward.
This right here is one of the main reasons I find “infotainment” takeover of my phone so frustrating: I have yet to find the onboard nav system that’s easier and faster to use than Google Maps on my phone. I really don’t want to futz with menus and submenus and clumsy keyboards, I just want to put in my destination on my phone and have the nice little lady who lives inside give her customary, reasonably reliable turn-by-turn callouts. Oh, sure, she talks too damn much—repeating the same simple instruction three and four and five times (“In half a mile, use the right lane to turn right onto…in a quarter mile, use the right lane to turn right onto…in 300 feet, use the right lane to turn right onto…use the right lane to turn right onto…turn right onto”) and she hallucinates signage (“Turn left onto 97 South, East Rosyln Parkway, Old 15 South, signs for 97 South, East Rosyln Parkway, Old 15 South”—no, it’s just called Roslyn; nobody ever calls it anything else) and she has other behavioural flaws I wish Google would fix, now they’re no longer busy not being evil. But I’ll take those annoyances over the bigger and more numerous ones that seem to confront me with every in-car nav system I’ve tried to compare.
At least the Rogue’s touch screen could be dimmed almost all the way down and then switched quasi-off.
Thanks for your insights! My car (Mopar) had the factory setting for the outside mirror flip down to point at the ground, and the seat auto move back features enabled, I eventually found those settings wayyy deep in the control panel and disabled them.
I am finding that rear headrests are unremovable in many cars, my Mopar being one such example. I did take them out of the rear seats of my crossover.
As for the thick A pillars: I thought there must have been an air bag hidden inside there, it was so thick. I was first in line at a red light, and I watched a pedestrian cross from my left to right, and he completely disappeared from my view in that A pillar. I trust no child ever finds themselves so hidden behind that pillar. I have to pay extra attention in my car.
Same in my ’07 Accord—the windshield pillars are very good at hiding pedestrians and even bicyclists. I have to deliberately look around both sides of both pillars. Jaguar-Land Rover and Continental have devised virtually transparent A-pillars (the inside of the pillar is a display showing what a camera sees on the outside of the pillar): neat, I guess, but oy.
X3. My 2015 Mazda 3 suffers from all of those traits bar the automatic rear view mirror adjustment, plus an über-sensitive low tire pressure alarm which I now ignore (I check the pressures manually like I have done all my life, so to hell with it). I had a few near misses on the Autobahn because of the dead spots until I got used to this – I drive it like I would a truck or a van now. Frankly, I feel SAFER in such situation in my 1964 Mercury Comet with its tiny (2) mirrors because there are NO dead spots.
But it returns 34 MPG and is infinitely safer, so.
The only time I’ve preferred to use a rental car’s nav is when it’s had a HUD that projects the directions on the windscreen. Otherwise, Google Maps is my go-to.
You’re spot-on about Google Maps’ directions. Sometimes the “name” of the so damn long. Here, it often says “State Route” for roads within city limits and we just don’t ever refer to them as State Routes.
I imagine you’d be happy with a car with Android Auto so you can just use Google Maps through the infotainment.
Regarding “state routes” that is the top level name for that road and the fact that when it runs through a city they may tack a name on it doesn’t mean that it isn’t ultimately state route xx and you know it will go through to take you somewhere outside of the city. In some locals it also means that the state patrol can give you a ticket on that road and depending on your local that might mean that you want to be a little more careful, as you’ve got two sets of people out looking to enhance revenue.
All of which is zero percent apposite to the task of providing useful turn-by-turn directions. Think about it.
I don’t know
I find having a phone in a phone holder that is attached to my windshield to be both annoying and a bit of a distraction. I prefer the Nav to be both in the dash and with a bigger screen(then a phone)
I do like Google Maps because I don’t have to buy a new Nav disc or download stuff on a flashdrive to update the Nav in my car like I would if I had a in car GPS. Google updates it.
On both my 2018 Elantra and Moparlee’s son’s car, the addition of Android Auto and Apple Car Play allows you the ability to connect your phone to the USB port and project Google Maps onto the the car’s infotainment screen allowing it to be a “Nav” system. Android Auto is great. I simply plug my phone into the USB port and stick the phone and cable in the little cubby hole next to the USB port. I can control all aspects of Google maps, make and receive phone calls all without touching the phone. So no clutter of wires facing me and no unsightly phone mount on my windshield
My Elantra has a button on the radio marked DISP. Pushing it turns off the display. I can still use the radio/USB media by way of the radio knobs or steering wheel controls but the display is off(changing a channel will cause a tiny popup window to appear at the top of the screen briefly to show the channel/song and then goes away.
“See, yeah. I understand the intent of these kinds of “helpful” little features, but I wish they’d knock it the frack off; usually they’re just annoying. That extra-wipe-after-a-pause is one example (if washer fluid drips down from the top, I’ll flick the switch myself, thanks). Three others that gritched me in a rental Nissan Rogue recently: shift to Reverse and the side mirrors tip down. NO! I had them set correctly, and I wanted them to stay the hell where I put them! And the driver’s seat, likewise, moved back when I opened the door and forward when I closed it. Again, NO! That was not only unhelpful, it was creepy and disorientating. I set the goddamn seat where I wanted it, and I don’t appreciate the car second-guessing me in an effort to be “helpful”.”
Well in many cars you can turn those things off.
I’m torn on the courtesy wipe, I could go either way but so far I have left in on in our cars that have it.
The mirrors are a must and I wish my other cars had it. If you adjust your mirrors wide then how do you back into a tight spot. Most cars that have the tilting mirrors you can adjust where they go to. That way you can see the back corners of your car and maybe the curb if you are parallel parking on your own.
The auto seat in my car is paired with a steering column that moves out of the way too. The fact that it moves back can be an issue when you have a passenger in the back. But again it can be turned off and that is what I do when I’ve got a full load of passengers.
“If you adjust your mirrors wide then how do you back into a tight spot. ”
I do it by leaning left to look out the driver’s side mirror and leaning right to look out the passenger side mirror. Doing so gives me the standard view out of each one. I don’t find it inconvenient.
Well, I did it multiple times using the Rogue’s very good rear, front, and 360° bird’s-eye view cameravision. Hence my annoyance at the utterly superfluous mirror monkey motion.
My daughter is on her 2nd Kia a Forte5 the first being a Rio that was rear ended and totaled. Both have been mechanically very reliable and fun to drive where I see the cheapness is the interior quality. Seats and plastics dont hold up very well. Other than that they are good looking fun little cars for for your teens.
“On the subject of tires, the car does not come with a spare tire. This is a weight saving and a cost saving measure I’m sure. ”
Yes you are correct. The good news is that you can fit a full size tire in the spare tire well. You just need the tire and the jack and jack tools. You just need to remove that tray where the can of wind and the compressor gets stored (dont toss the compressor as it is pretty good quality)
If you get the donut spare then you need the case tool(the black styrofoam thing that holds the jack) to hold the trunk mat up or the floor will sag. The full size tire is flush with the spare tire well and the floor don’t sag.
No GPS in your EX but with Apple and the Android support, the screen becomes a GPS unit when you plug your phone to it as you can use google maps (it is pretty good too)
I should stop being surprised at Kias getting respect in the world at large. Mine has treated me far better than my most optimistic expectations and I would shop another without hesitation.
The world is going to CVTs but that doesn’t mean I have to like them. I plan to hold out as long as possible.
I have never driven one of Kia’s small cars (Hyundai’s either), and will have to do so some time.
The CVT thing is new for 2018 on the Fortes and Elantras IIRC. I get Hyundai and Kia rentals all the time and am universally entirely pleased with them. Simple and intuitive controls/ergonomics, the interiors/exteriors are generally inoffensive/mildly handsome, quality of materials is not “rich” but everything is put together well and nothing screams “super cheap” like a few elements even in the 2018 Camry do. My personal favorite is the LX-FE trim of the Optima. No-nonsense, nothing to figure out when you hop in, regular 6spd automatic and naturally aspirated 2.4L I4 that got me absolutely astounding MPG (43 mpg indicated after driving 4 hours from Ithaca to NYC), but my favorite part was the suspension tuning: the LX-FE gets nice 16 inch alloy wheels with 65 series sidewalls, the ride was absolutely never harsh over the worst of Staten Island roads and steel plates/manhole covers, but wasn’t a marshmallow ride either.
I don’t think the current generation of Forte is as attractive as the last one but it remains a compelling compact offering. Especially here in Australia where they have a class-leading 7-year warranty and the Kia brand has really picked up some steam.
I have a lot of respect for Hyundai/Kia and wouldn’t hesitate to buy a new product from them.
I am always surprised how our neighbors to the north still often rust proof their vehicles. It’s seems the practice here in the states is almost nonexistent, and I live in a four season cold-weather salt and slushfest state. Of course the number of rust buckets in these parts is pretty high especially with full-size pick ups over five or six years old. I’ve heard the term “oiling” by Canadians which I understand to mean the application every couple of years of an oily substance to the understructure. How is this different from the traditional rust proofing I grew up with in the 70s by people like Midas and Ziebart? Last time I bought a brand new car was 2011. The dealer didn’t even bring it up as an added service at the end of the sale where they want you to buy a bunch of extra crap like tire insurance, extended warrantees etc.
To my knowledge, the oily substance they use today is just that – more of a clear oil that has adhesive properties. The old rustproofing regimen I knew of from Sym-Tec was more of a black tarry substance designed to provide a coating of permanence. Of course it never did, and once it cracked and flaked, moisture and salt eroded the metal due to corrosion. This new stuff coats the exhaust system, the brake lines, everything underneath, plus inside the door panels.
Ziebart treatment is a subpar application of a coating inferior to what is effectively already done(and has been done for decades) in the factory. Rather than dipping the bare steel shell in a vat of a charged coating to reach unreachable surfaces in the structure and bond, Ziebart drills holes in random parts of inner structure and runs a paint wand of undercoating style paint to cover the same areas. There’s no prep, coverage is spotty and consequently the coating flakes away after time and moisture gets under it and makes the car rust that much faster. I avoid cars with the tell tale plugs in the door jams like the plague.
Periodic oil undercoatings work much better, if you’ve ever noticed if you had a car with oil leaks, the areas covered in oil remain quite mint when you finally wipe it away, same applies if the bulk of the underbody and strategic areas like inside the doors on a large scale. But as the name implies are temporary and very nasty if you do your own maintenance using jackstands. There’s a bit of a black magic as to what works best too, kerosine/motor oil mixes are the classic backyard mechanic concoction.
I look at it as an arms race between car manufacturers improving corrosion resistance of their metals (by way of galvanization, more durable paint, etc) against improvements in road treatments that help melt snow at ever-lower temperatures (safer roadways, but even more corrosive substances). I agree, a tiny minority of people these days seem to bother with rustproofing in the US, although several dealership chains around here include some kind of Ziebart package as standard on all of their used cars. Not sure what Ziebart uses these days, the preferable oil spray, or the rubberized crap that just causes worse rust issues. I do Fluid Film at home and I like it a lot, but would gladly pay $100 for someone else to spray it down.
Krown here in Canada is one of the popular oil spray places. The first application costs a little more as they do drill and plug to get into cavities such as door pillars and rocker panels and inside doors. As for it being a sticky mess it does dry off/wear/wash off which is why we reapply at regular intervals. Yearly is what they recommend however every other year works just fine. My sister’s first car, a ’97 Tercel is still around and looking good and so is her current car and my last one too. It just works.
Is there a better time of year to get an oil spray done? Ive had my current car sprayed in the fall, but the rep at Krown told me its better to get it done in the spring.
Here I thought that I was the only one adjusting mirrors like that. There are others! It takes surprisingly little time to adapt to it and then it is second nature. I do have a little arthritis in the neck and loose ligaments in the left shoulder so it helps not to need such a large motion shoulder check. A slight turn of the head is enough.
The Elantra and Forte were both on the list of possibilities on my last long term car shopping adventure. It took me eight months and I still haven’t test driven either one so thanks for the vicarious test drive on one of them. One day, maybe.
I drive with the mirrors adjusted like that too. My wife does also, which is nice because even though we drive with the seat in very different positions, I never need to re-adjust the mirrors after she drives.
My Mrs and I aim our mirrors this way as well, and have for several years. The only problem comes after someone (usually one of our adult kids) borrows a car and re-aims the mirrors in the common way. If we don’t catch it right away we run the risk of changing lanes into some invisible car out of our habit of relying on mirrors rather than the “head swivel”.
Whenever I switch cars with my kids I make sure not to touch their mirror adjustments, (or seats either truth be told), so that they are good to hop in and go upon return of their vehicle. I have suggested to my boys’ significant others about the mirrors also, but each of the girls have declined, politely that is.
Here is a link to Kenzie’s video on the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W-oMe33uNY
Moparlee:
For one who, like I, am such a staunch user of the BGE mirror method, I would insist on my children using it, whether they like it or not!
Today’s youth are so oblivious of so much, and not just the adjustment of the mirrors outside their cars. Case in point the current Eastern Europe crisis, which has, at the least, the potential to become global in scale quite quickly.
Ask them what they know about atomic/nuclear weapons and they’re “Like, really huge bombs dude”. 🤦♂️ Like the whole thing is some cool video game.
Ninety percent of what they consume as ‘news’ is what they see on Facebook or watch on Facetime, etc. They’d be better off not watching anything at all than absorbing the nonsense that passes for news on those sites.
I meant TickTock – not FaceTime! Sorry, I’m from the ’70s. None of this “online” existence makes even the most remote sense to me…
Not quite everything is a “system” nowadays; things that aren’t labeled as systems are called “solutions.” That one annoys me even more.
We’ve had our first Kia (a Sedona) now for about 3 months, and so far I’m pleased… especially considering it cost thousands less than the equivalent Toyota. My few quibbles are lessened by the Kia was a good bargain.
I believe the reduced pricing is also reflected in the crossover world or CRVs, Rav4s, and Sportages. The Kia is less, by a significant amount, as far as I know. I haven’t checked in on the Hyundai. I recently test drove an Equinox, but I swore off buying a car from the General ever again, many years ago.
I haven’t yet owned a car with any proximity sensing or lane departure features beyond the blind-spot monitors and associated rear cross-traffic alert “system” on my Tacoma. The latter is effective and useful. But, living in an area with no snow, I’ve wondered how the cameras work when covered with slush or frost, or lane markers are equally obscured. My backup camera needs frequent cleaning, and my blind-spot monitor sensors have also thrown a code and needed cleaning (inside the bumper, not just a quick wipe down like the camera lens) after driving on wet sand. I’m still skeptical about self-driving features … even if I’ve drunk the EV Koolade 🙂
Just as a follow up on the topic of sideview mirror adjustment. Here is a video that describes the adjustment, for those interested.
The Author – MOPRARLEE – wrote:
“like to eliminate blind spots by going real wide with the
outside mirrors. After all, the car I am driving is the last
one I need to see when changing lanes. Using this
method, any approaching car from the rear and on either
side moves from my rear view mirror, to the side mirror,
to my peripheral vision. I can reliably use my side mirrors
to execute lane changes without the need to ‘shoulder
check’. A quick glance is all that is required. On any
car I drive. Jim Kenzie, an auto journalist/engineer
around these parts authored this method years ago,”
I’m happy to hear someone else out there is aware of this side view mirror setting procedure, and uses it as do I!
Thanks for crediting someone involved in it’s development, and by the way, the ‘official’ term for it is “B.G.E.”, short for Blindspot/Glare Elimination.