KIA's Biggest Mistake? Why The Brilliant Stinger Has Been A Sales Disaster

This is the Kia Stinger. When it was launched a few years ago, Kia made it quite plain that they were going after some extremely well-established German rivals here in the UK and Europe. And for most people that drove the car, we tended to agree that it was a very, very good car. I really loved the Stinger. I've driven a few of them, including one on a 3,500 mile road trip But they just never sold. Whereas other Kias can shift in their tens of thousands, the Stinger only managed to sell a few hundred units in the last few years. So what went wrong? I decided that with examples of this V6 GTS model available now at less than £30,000, this would be the ideal time to go back and revisit what I truly believe is one of the great underappreciated cars out there today. It's not a bad looking car. And in fact, the Stinger's looks have really grown on me over the last couple of years. It's from that kind of Coupaloon school of thought. They haven't really committed to sort of coupe or saloon styling here and kind of just gone down the middle. But that's fine because that seems to be a fairly popular category. I suppose the most direct rivals would be things like BMW's 4 Series Grand Coupe or perhaps the Mercedes CLS. The only two bits about the styling that really grow with me are these very unfortunate fake bonnet vents you get on the V6 and the very large and slightly intrusive reflector at the back of the car, which I can only think is probably something that Kia have put there to satisfy the US marketplace because I don't really think those need to exist on a UK car. Now, this model here today is the GTS. It's the top of the lineup. It's the daddy. Kia do things slightly differently in different territories. The car I drove in the USA was a GT2. The significant difference in spec between the two that I drove was the fact that in America, you can get all-wheel drive, whereas in the UK, that was simply never offered as an option. Now, Kia is a company that have produced a lot of very interesting and exciting cars, but they've often been missing the perfect engine. Not so here. The beating heart of this car is a 3.3-litre twin-turbo V6. It produces 370 PS with about 360 horsepower and 510 newton-metres of torque. That's about 370 pound-feet, so it's not short on shove, and that is mated to an eight-speed automatic gearbox that is of Kia's own design. It's not the ZF unit that I previously thought it might have been. Whenever I've got a press car for review, it's usually about this point where I whip out the spec sheet from the manufacturer and I talk you through all the options that they've thrown at it, and more often than not, they'll take the price from a pretty reasonable to a barely believable, especially if it's something Italian. Not so with the Kia. Allow me to demonstrate. On the Kia Stinger, V6, opening glass sunroof, standard. Heated and cooled front seats, standard. Heated rear seats, standard. 360-degree camera with front and rear parking sensors, 19-inch alloy wheels, standard. Adaptive dampers, standard. And those dampers, by the way, are specifically tuned for UK roads, which is nice. Wireless phone charger, which is something that I love, standard. Adaptive cruise control and speed limiter, all standard. The total cost of options on this press car is nil. You've even got luxuries such as a smart power tailgate and a boot which is actually a reasonable size. It's not quite as cavernous as in the 4 Series, but it is at least large enough to hold one childhood. I've been helping my mum clear out her garage this week and I had to bring home my entire collection of horrible histories books, and they fit in here no problem whatsoever. The car shape, however, does create some compromises in other areas. The most obvious people to suffer are people in the back. Now, if you're under six foot, it's a wonderful place to be. The seats are beautiful, soft leather, you've got power sockets, you've got the heating I mentioned before, and it's a pretty darn comfy car to be in. But if you're over six foot, there just isn't enough room. Rear visibility is a little bit compromised due to the shape of that boot. However, if you're not looking backwards, it's all pretty much good news up here. Quality of the leather, unsurprisingly, still as good as in the back. These seats are just that much comfier than any other Kia that I've been in. Most of the others that I drive, after about 200 miles, I start to get a little bit uncomfortable. This car, I once did 720 miles in a day in, absolutely fine. This is a wonderful mile muncher. The steering wheel is pleasing to hold, a nice shape. Quality of all the materials in here is pretty decent. Yes, there are plastics and things in here, and the odd bit of vinyl, but it all feels very solid. It's even small details, like the fact that these buttons on the steering wheel are just tactile. They're a beautiful shape, they've been thought through. The only things that date this car are the fact that it's still got analog dials here, which I have no problem with whatsoever. The screen in the middle that is a tacked on screen that doesn't disappear is a little bit small, even in comparison to some of the lower models in the Kia range. That's one of the few areas where the Stinger is really starting to show its age. Otherwise, this is an excellent cockpit. It all sounds good so far, right? I wonder if the car drives as well as I remember. In a word, no. This car is actually so much better than I remember it being, and it's got a fairly hefty curb weight to it, much higher than the equivalent BMW, but you just don't know when you're driving it. You really don't. There's something else pretty amazing about it too. In comparison with the Jaguars that I've recently driven, the suspension is not quite as advanced. It's McPherson strut up front with multi-link at the rear, but it drives genuinely brilliantly. The steering, although electric, has just the right amount of feel to it, and it weights up nicely when you're pressing on too. The car is super agile, changing direction so willingly and easily. The brakes certainly do their job, but perhaps the most impressive thing in comparison with the Jaguar XF that I drove is how it gets the power to the ground. There's a lot of power and torque to put through two wheels. I know 370 horsepower doesn't sound like a lot these days, but it is. The Kia does occasionally struggle for traction. Whereas the Jag, when you put the power downward, hop and jump and skip and axle tramp all over the place, this doesn't. The car's traction control is pretty smart and lets it spin up just the right amount so you can feel it moving about, especially in, say, Sport Plus mode where the traction is pretty much reined in. The car has mid-range shove to spare. Those twin turbos are pretty hard to catch off duty, and they're always ready to throw this thing towards the horizon. It's just what you want from a big, proper saloon car. It's awesome. Yeah, the noise being pumped into the cabin is a little bit on the artificial side. There are several settings for it. I've got it in the enhanced mode at the moment. But even with it fully off, I don't really actually notice that much of a difference. What's amazing, though, is just how quickly you feel at one with this car. As you probably imagine, I drive a lot of different cars. Some of them reveal their talents very readily. Some of them take a lot more time. They're not so willing to give up their secrets to tell you just how far you can push them. But this, you just hop in it and you drive it like it's a hot hatch. It's absolutely incredible. Kias are the accessible driver's car that nobody talks about. Now, when I first met the Stinger at a Kia press event a couple of years ago, they gave us all a piece of paper. And on that piece of paper, it said the Kia Stinger is a GT car. It is not a track car. It is not designed to be the fastest thing. It is designed to be the best thing to get you from A to B in comfort and do the jag thing, the grey space and pace thing. And it does that absolutely brilliantly. I genuinely mean it when I say I would happily cross America in one of these. It is the perfect dual car. There are some small failings in the car. The gearbox is not the best, certainly not dual-clutch good, but it's pretty damn decent. When you let it do its own thing, it's wonderful. The gear shift indicator down here takes the place of the gear you're actually in. So for sporty driving, it's a little bit annoying. There's also no obvious way to lock the car into manual mode. When you're in sport or sport plus, I think when you override it with the paddles, it will just stay in manual. In comfort, it won't. It'll revert. But even still in sports mode, there are certain circumstances which will make the car go back into the drive. I think when you come to a standstill or when it decides it has to change gear for you, you've not changed down, for example. However, as a tool to go down a lane, this is too much fun. You can get the rear end kicking out a little bit. I never get the rear end kicking out on reviews. Never. I don't do it because it's silly. It's puerile. But this car actually gives me the confidence that I can do it and nothing crazy is going to happen. Yeah, I'm not going completely sideways in it, but I didn't intend to. It's just a hoot. It's just so much fun. And if you've not driven one or you've not driven any Kia, you need to try one because they are everything that a big saloon should be. I really enjoyed driving the two Jaguars that I reviewed in December, the Jag saloons, the XE and the XF. But both of those felt just a little bit compromised. And sure, the Kia has some infotainment being slightly old, that kind of stuff. But in terms of driving, I don't feel like the Kia is actually anywhere near as compromised as either of the Jags. And that's saying something. Partly, that's going to be down to spec. I think by keeping the slightly smaller 19s on this car, they have improved ride quality no end and made the car just that much more usable, yet still a little bit fidgety at lower speeds, even in comfort mode. But that's fine. It's not distracting. It's not disturbing. It's not uncomfortable, never uncomfortable, even on pretty bad, broken British B roads. It's incredible. It's a car that my 79 year old grandmother thinks is lovely, comfortable, nice and sensible. And it's a car that brings out the 18 year old hooligan in me. Magic. How do they do it? So it looks good. It drives great. It's got an excellent warranty and you can pick one up at a relatively bargain price. What the hell happened? There are a lot of people who I'm sure will be happy to tell you that it's in fact this badge which is responsible for all the problems with the Stinger. But I simply don't believe that. Here in the UK, we're rapidly falling out of love with German cars and there's no stigma anymore about buying Korean. They're fantastically well made things. And in fact, the 10th best selling car in the country is a Kia. Kias are cool and they're here to stay. So I just don't accept that argument. If you ask my buddy, Michael, who's very particular about his cars, he'd tell you it's because he can't fit his six foot plus relatives in the back and he doesn't like the slightly out of date screen up at the front, which is fine. And I accept that. But that still doesn't account for everyone. The truth, as ever, I'm afraid, is just not so simple. There are a number of factors which I think contributed to the Stinger's downfall and none of them are really the car's fault. Part of it, I'm sure, is timing. 10 or 15 years ago, people were all over saloons. And in fact, this sort of Coupaloon type car would have done very well indeed. But 2020 is just going to be all about hatchbacks, SUVs and crossovers. The saloon and even the coupe, as we know it, is dying. People don't even buy three door hatchbacks anymore. I mean, ask Alfa Romeo. They stunned everybody when they set the Giulia upon the world. It was a fantastic, brilliant car. I love it. Everyone else loved it. The Quadrifoglio in particular basically single handedly revived Alfa Romeo as a brand for petrolheads. It should have saved the company. And I guess in some ways it kind of did. But it was then outsold three to one by their own Stelvio. That's just the world we live in now. Although I agreed with it at the time, and to some extent still do, I think Kia UK's decision to offer the car only in real wheel drive probably hurt them a little bit as well. 10 years ago, if you wanted an all-wheel drive saloon car, you basically had to buy an Audi. But now BMW and Mercedes have cottoned on to the fact that buyers in the UK for some reason want all-wheel drive in their cars, even if they never actually drive them in scenarios that require it. But hey-ho, that's what people want to pay for. So I guess that's what you have to sell them. And that's probably another small reason the Stinger didn't do so well. Ultimately, what beat the Stinger is probably numbers. This car will struggle to do 30 to the gallon in normal usage. And although it's not actually that much worse than the Jaguar XE I had on the channel a couple of weeks ago, people will just look at its official 27.7 average and go, ah, no way, I'm out. Yes, there are other engines available, but neither of them is anywhere near as good or exciting as this one. When you've got the BMW 440, which produces some pretty incredible numbers, it's an understandably hard sell. Then you add on the fact that this car needs servicing every 6,000 miles. If you're American and watching this, you probably think that's absolutely perfectly normal and fine. But in Europe, manufacturers have been stretching out service intervals for years and years and years. And it's not uncommon anymore to see 20,000 miles between services. That, I think, is wrong. And I think Kia are doing the right thing. There's a reason that they offer in the USA a 10-year warranty on the powertrain. And that's because they want to make sure that it's properly looked after. Meanwhile, some of their German rivals don't really care about the car lasting beyond the first lease. So they just don't care about the state of the oil anymore. And they're trying to save a bit of money. And that, I think, is unfortunate. The final nail in the coffin for the Kia has to be price. If you're simply looking at list, it offers far better value for money than any of their German rivals. However, the Germans recently have been giving some extremely aggressive discounts on their cars to try and make up the numbers. And their lease deals are extraordinarily competitive, especially for fleet buyers, which is still a very large part of the marketplace. And things like that short service interval don't appeal to customers that are going to be buying them for company use either. This means that the Kia just doesn't quite stack up compared to the competition. However, there is some extremely good news. All of these things mean that so many people have been willing to completely overlook the Stinger when it is, in fact, a brilliant car and one of my very favorites. If you want an all-round usable but still enjoyable car, this is absolutely fantastic. And because it's been so criminally overlooked, it is something extraordinarily rare. This is a car made to mass production standards, so it's of extremely high quality. But it's special because it's rare. Whenever I've driven this, people fall in love with it. They think it's amazing. And it's a Kia. This car single-handedly changes people's perceptions of the brand. And that is the reason that I wanted to see one again, drive it again, and see whether it actually was as good as I remembered. But in fact, it's so much better. So please go out there and buy one. And Kia, if you're watching, don't be downhearted. This was amazing. I want you to keep building them. And eventually, people will realize you can do it just as good as everybody else, if not better. That's all from me. I'm going to enjoy the rest of my week with the Stinger. Bye-bye.