Story by Steven Cole Smith
Live from Detroit, almost, it’s the North American Car of the Year awards! Also the North American Truck of the Year Awards! And did we mention the North American SUV of the Year awards?
Inarguably most of the “best of” awards have been presented by now, but for the last 26 years or so, NACOTY …
I've been seeing a poop load of the new big KIA/Hyundai SUV's on the road. People seem to like them quite a lot.
They actually don't look half bad. I've gathered nothing but good things about them.
In reply to Steven Cole Smith :
Is there a worse sort of purist than a Ferrari purist? Barf..... They make me root for Mercedes, which is saying something.
Despite having a locking center differential, the AWD system in the Kia/Hyundai seems fairly pavement biased- or at least the descriptions I found regarding it seemed to deal with snow and such.
"24 and snowing when I got to Detroit last night"
Glad you got to enjoy our lack of winter this year.
On the SUV thing. I'm honestly surprised that the Telluride won based on my previous expereince. I really like what Kia/Hyundai are bringing to the table these days. I remember how massively unpopular I was at work 15 years ago (I was at Ford at the time) when I said we needed to view Kia/Hyundai as our competition and stop pretending that we were top the pile when it came to sedans.
Much as I like what I'm seeing, and note I haven't driven a Stinger or new Telluride, I have been sorely disappointed in every Kia/Hyundai product I've driven. They seem to put together a nice looking package that works on paper, but the driving experience has always been sub par. The worst was the Kia Soul, it looks so so good, but the driving dynamics and NVH were atrocious. Ont he freeway it was a nasty, porpoising buzz bomb. It's one saving grace was that it was so unpleasant to drive at our normal 80-85 that we saved gas by going slower. Same with the cross over CUV, I forget it's name, the Escape size one. We had one for four days rental in Tx last April. Again, it looked great and the specs looked fine, but once inside the touch points were abysmal, the ergonomics were questionable and the driving experience was worse than forgettable, it was unpleasant, especially the trans calibration and tip in performance. I wont even talk about the older sedans other than I'm surprised they survived long enough in the US market to become a creditable choice.
I am not anti Korean, I work for a Korean company who does hundreds of millions of $ business with Kia/Hyndai, so I have a vested interest in their products doing well. It's just that so far my driving experience has been poor. Also I have driven the Aviator and think it's an amazing vehicle inside, outside and to drive (utterly unaceptable launch issues asside).
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