SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you can get at home.
*To read one of our archived road tests, just select from the alphabetical menu of manufacturers' names on the left. Hover your cursor over the manufacturer's name, then choose from the drop-down menu that appears.
*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
Peter, our local Kia dealer, reckons the new Cerato Koup 1.6 T-GDi is what the original one should have been. Back then, he says, local GTi fans, attracted by its angular lines and aggressive demeanour, swarmed into his showroom for test drives. Halfway up the Hilton hill, they turned back in disgust: “Dull,” they said dismissively.
Better late than never, the new engine changes that. And just to show they’re sorry for the oversight, Kia made the body stiffer and beefed up the suspension so it handles even better, added more nice-to-haves and made it sound good too. Then they fitted a choice of three steering weights so you can decide on a driving style to suit your mood. That’s because sometimes you don’t need total involvement; you just want to survive the traffic jams and get to work.
First up, let’s get past the letters. T obviously means turbo and the lower-case i always stands for injection, but GDi has nothing to do with diesel –it means gasoline direct injection; simple, really. It’s a twin-scroll turbocharged version of Kia/Hyundai’s 1600 cc Gamma engine, putting out 152 kW and 265 Nm. That places it, power-wise, neatly between Peugeot 208 GTi’s 147 kW and Golf GTI’s 162 – but let us not forget that the VW engine is somewhat bigger and develops a lot more torque. There’s a certain amount of money involved as well.
So while it won’t threaten the latest version of the German pocket rocket, it looks magnificent and has more than enough power, responsiveness and chutzpah to blow your cobwebs into oblivion. It sounds good too. The exhaust system features a transversely mounted free-flow muffler with dual tail pipes set into the black diffuser, and it’s tuned to produce suitably sporty music between 1000- and 4000 rpm.
Being Korean, the Kia Cerato Koup is well equipped. Apart from the usual powered windows and folding mirrors, it has automated dual-channel air conditioning, cruise control, a six-speaker CD/radio/MP3 player with Bluetooth, an onboard computer, auto-dipping interior mirror, leather seats with powered lumbar adjustment for the driver, HID headlamps, fog lamps, automatic locking on the move, screen defoggers at each end, lots of LEDs and a shipload of safety kit.
That includes the usual ABS brakes with brake assist and electronic braking force distribution, electronic stability control, traction control and vehicle stability management, hill start assist, front and rear parking radar with reversing camera, and six airbags. To match the car’s new sportiness, six-speed gearboxes are fitted. Our test unit had the manual version.
Its lever is placed within easy reach and shifts easily and positively; not quite notchy but precise. Pedals are well spaced but leave plenty of room for big feet to find the footrest. Although it’s sited for right-hand drive, we found the parking brake lever a little too close to the seat cushion for comfort. Part of the reason could be chairs that are slightly bigger than the old ones, yet still supportive without getting overly familiar. Overall, they are built a little wider; for people possibly a little broader than the twenty-somethings one might expect to find driving GTIs.
Apart from letting you choose between three steering weightings, using a discreet little button on the steering wheel, the Koup is mercifully free of gimmicky toys or “modes.” There is only one suspension setting; reasonably firm without being too harsh, and just one throttle response pattern – put your boot in and it goes. Quickly. In similar vein, seat controls are fully manual apart from the driver’s lumbar control mentioned earlier and the steering wheel adjusts for reach and rake mechanically. Even the rear seatback release mechanisms work by way of cables with knobs on the ends, like the choke button in Grampy’s first car.
While back there, releasing seatbacks, we find the boot is wide and square; it opens to upper thigh height and its loading lip is only 13 centimetres deep. There’s a protective rubber over-mat, and a pair of small side wells to secure smaller items. The floorboard hinges upward on either side to reveal two hidden stashes. Possibly less good is that the cavity is not very tall from floorboard to top, because of the coupé styling, so very big suitcases could be problematic. There is a light inside but no 12-Volt socket or lashing rings. Thankfully, the spare is a fully sized alloy wheel with original-spec’ 225/40 R18 tyre.
The added 50 mm of vehicle length and wheelbase shows up in excellent knee space for tall passengers in the back, but they will be cheated of headroom even though the new car is 20 mm taller than the old one; it’s that coupé shape again. The lesson of course is to move across to a proper Cerato hatch or sedan, with more rear headroom, when the children reach their gangly ‘teens.
So what do we have? It’s sporty, looks and sounds the part, is decently fitted, goes well and is competitively priced. What more could one want, although our better-looking half insisted on a PS for PS – that would be design chief Peter Schreyer: Make us a cabriolet. The design begs for one.
Test car from Kia Motors SA press fleet
The numbers
Price: R334 995
Engine: 1591 cc, DOHC, 16-valve, four-cylinder, turbocharged
Power: 152 kW at 6000 rpm
Torque: 265 Nm between 1750 and 4500 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 7,7 seconds
Maximum speed: 224 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 8,6 l/100 km
Tank: 50 litres
Boot: 433 litres
Warranty: 5 years/150 000 km; with 3 years roadside assistance
Service plan: 5 years/90 000 km
For our review of the 2010 Kia Cerato 2.0 Koup click here
Automatic transmission shown
This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.
Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8