Car Gazing
Bigger, better and still ultra cheap
New Kia Rio adds features and space for 2006
By Derek Price
The longer I've been a dad, the more I've come to realize that babies defy the laws of physics.
First off, they create mass at a rate that would astonish Stephen Hawking. These cute, little, itty-bitty creations snack on small amounts of milk and baby food throughout the day before processing it into enough waste to fill a fleet of dump trucks. A few bites of mashed-up peas can provide them with hours worth of fluids that spew from every orifice in their little bodies, and the pace at which they go through diapers has got to be approaching the speed of light. They're amazing creatures.
And, of course, they require massive, industrial-size loads of materials to keep them clean and happy. You see someone packing their Land Rover so full of groceries in the Wal-Mart parking lot that you'd think they were preparing to spend a year on the African savannah, but no. It's just a week's worth of supplies for their six-month-old.
That's why I was a little bit worried about taking the new Kia Rio to go shopping. It's classified as a subcompact, which typically means "the size of a shoebox," and I was nervous about having to cram the usual mountains of diapers, wipees, lotions, powders, soaps, baby food jars and the like – not to mention all our adult necessities – into a tiny economy car.
As I started to unload the shopping cart, I carefully packed all the stuff as tightly as possible into the trunk, thinking I'd need all the space I could get if I didn't want to carry frozen pizzas in my lap for the trip home.
By the time I finished, I couldn't believe my eyes.
Not only did everything fit in the trunk, there was room to spare. I could have fit another week's worth of diapers and wipees in there if I had to, and nothing had to ride in the back seat on the way home.
The Rio's new interior was equally impressive, at least from a roominess perspective. My whole family could ride in it comfortably, and I had enough leg and shoulder room in the driver's seat where I didn't feel the least bit claustrophobic, something I couldn't say about the '05 Rio.
I also liked Kia's 110-horsepower, 1.6-liter, four-cylinder engine as I pulled out of the parking lot and into highway traffic. It obviously never felt like a racecar, but it had enough kick to pull the lightweight car nicely and efficiently down the road. It didn't seem quite as wheezy as some other cars in the Rio's ultra-low-end price range (it starts around $10,500).
On the downside, the Rio still feels like a very cheap car in many ways.
When you touch the interior trim it feels like it's made from the same plastic as Little Tykes toys, and a lot of the switchgear feels flimsy and imprecise. None of that inspires confidence that you're driving a high-quality car, despite the Rio's 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty.
The body styling also reeks of cheapness, although it's not necessarily an ugly car. The front end is fairly contemporary and Ford-like, but big, wide, nasty strips of matte black plastic trim across the doors and bumpers just look tacky. It could be a much better looking car than it is.
Then again, who buys a Kia as a fashion statement? It's supposed to be an inexpensive, practical, reliable family car, and that's exactly what it is – no more, no less.
(Derek Price is a newspaper editor and freelance writer living in Texas.
Contact him at dprice@cargazingonline.com)
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