ASSOCIATE EDITOR JAKE LINGEMAN: Kia did a fine job “taking inspiration from” the BMW on this K900.
The shape is nearly identical, I’ve only seen it in BMW-ish colors and
even that tiger nose grille is starting to look a little “double-kidney”
to me. That’s not to say it’s a bad look. The 7-series is a big,
imposing, handsome car, and so is this. I’m not a fan of chrome though,
so, new wheels, new door handles and get rid of that strip in the back.
Power feels very BMW-ish as well. Throttle weight and tip-in are perfect, it doesn’t jump off the line like many Mercedes
vehicles do. It has a nice progressive acceleration feel. Sport mode
seems to do very little to change that, though I do enjoy the futuristic
digits for the speedo and tach. The brakes were a little soft for such a
big car. I found myself having to push a few inches down farther than I
thought I should, to come to a stop.
It
absorbs bumps readily, before they get to the seat of your pants, but
unlike the BMW, the bangs in the cabin sound a little…cheaper than the
German brute. Steering is right on for this size car, and it keeps quiet
on the road, too, except for those potholes.
The
K900’s interior is great. Any time you can get accent piping on the
seats and doors is a good time. The map, navigation, radio functions all
worked well, though the climate graphics were a little hard to
understand. Oh, I also thought it was a touchscreen for a few minutes,
until I found the jog dial on the center armrest.
The
floor and ceiling materials look upscale, and most of the touchpoints
on the doors are soft and supple. I didn’t bang around on the dash too
much, but nothing caught my eye.
There is a ton
of room in this car. With me in the driver’s seat there’s about 18
inches of legroom, and even with the seat all the way back there’s still
about 12 inches.
I took the K900 to my wife’s
Christmas party and shoved at least 30 gifts of all sizes in the trunk
and back seat, with room to spare. The valets were also impressed; they
hadn’t seen one yet.
Will Kia ever reach BMW
status, in quality, fit and finish, overall feel? Probably not. But for
$66K, you get a car with nearly every modern technology you could ask
for, room enough for a four-adult road trip and a V8 that’ll make the
back tires sing if you need to. That’s pretty good proposition.
The K900's ride is smooth to the point of being overly vague.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR GRAHAM KOZAK: That
effortless steering. That wafty ride. Those cushy, cushy seats. That
assertive size. Yes, the Kia K900 is probably the nicest 1955 Cadillac
I’ve ever driven.
I’m not exactly complaining.
The K900 hearkens back to a time when “luxury” and “sport” were not tied
at the hip; you helmed your big, comfortable family sedan during the
week and zipped around in your dorky, underpowered but sporty MG on the
weekends.
The big potential stumbling block
here, as practically everyone on the planet has already pointed out, is
that this is a $66,400 Kia. Granted, it has the V8 and the six-grand VIP
package, so it’s loaded -- but it still occupies a sort of no-man’s
land between the less expensive (but equally roomy) Chrysler and Dodge
offerings and the more expensive “true” luxury offerings from the
Germans and Lexus.
Let’s leave badges out of
the equation for a minute, since we all know that brand prestige plays a
nontrivial role in moving cars. The Kia is a handsome car. Power is
ample here, and smoothly delivered (I imagine the base-level V6 would
complain if pushed). It gives you more or less all of the cutting-edge
features you could want and keeps you coddled to boot.
Yet
fit and finish is not quite up to its competitors’ levels. A good,
concrete example is the retractable cup holder cover on the central
console. Covered with a sort of plasticky wood veneer, it functions
exactly as designed; it seems destined to provide years of dependable
beverage-holding service. It really only looks bad when you compare it
to the retractable cupholder on, say, a new Mercedes-Benz (I could come
up with examples from Audi, BMW and even Lexus here, but the Benz is the
first to spring to mind).
Swathed in
open-grain wood -- real wood that feels real to the touch -- the
execution of the Benz’s cupholder cover is flawless. Grains align as the
little hatch swings into place, every time. And this is on the C-class,
not the flagship S-class.
It’s a minor, petty
thing, not enough to sink the K900 by any means, but it does point to
where some automakers do “luxury” better than others -- and why they can
successfully charge huge premiums for their products. No, as it turns
out, selling luxury cars isn’t all about branding, though sometimes you have to compare the earnest upstart to the reigning champs to see that clearly.
So,
does the K900 out-German the Germans? Not really. But it almost
out-Lexuses Lexus’ efforts to out-German the Germans, if that makes any
sense, and that’s progress for the Koreans. It’s certainly more of a
big, unabashedly comfy cruiser than anything the Americans have built
for a few decades; comfort-sprung, it suffers from no sporty pretensions
even as it doesn’t want for power.
I wouldn’t
consider it a budget BMW, but it sort of makes sense if you think of it
as a brand-new Buick Roadmaster, floating straight into your
value-oriented hands via Seoul. But then,
I’ll be the first to admit that not many people think like me. Which is
probably why Kia isn’t exactly selling a lot of K900s.
The K900 is powered by a 5.0-liter V8 mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR JAY RAMEY: The K900
follows up on the debuts of the Genesis and the Equus from Hyundai, and
I only mention this because those distant corporate siblings tested the
waters before Kia felt safe enough to dip its toes into the luxobarge
segment in the U.S.
And like its corporate siblings, Kia has to contend with the questions
first raised by the Volkswagen Phaeton (and perhaps the first-generation
Audi A8
before it). Kia is perhaps on just as shaky ground as Volkswagen was
back in 2003 when it loosened its technological terror on the world,
with the Phaeton ending up making less sense in North America
than elsewhere. Up till now, the priciest sedan from Kia was the Kia
Amanti, itself based on the Korean-market Hyundai Grandeur. But that
car, ostensibly labeled full-size, only offered a V6 underhood. So we’re
in slightly different territory here with the K900.
Executive
sedans have been built by Korean manufacturers for decades really, so
these entries into the full-size luxury segment are not anything new per
se, aside from the fact that they’re only now making their appearances
in the U.S. market.
In
terms of size, the K900 feels closer to the short-wheelbase versions of
the Mercedes-Benz S-class and the BMW 7-series rather than the E-class
and the 5-series. Kia seems to be aiming for that gap between the two
segments, and that’s not a bad way to go as in terms of price the K900
will compete with the midsizers rather than the plutobarges. And as
such, it’ll inevitably offer more room than the E-class and the 5-series
just purely in terms of size, though I have trouble picturing someone
cross-shopping a K900 with the Germans in the real world.
I
took the K900 on a 580-mile trip over the course of one day, managing
to average 20 mpg with some spirited driving which was mostly comprised
of what I’ll call highway cruising. There was always plenty of torque on
reserve, and the gearbox was wonderfully intuitive, never missing a
beat. Throttle response was also spot on, so there wasn’t a lag between
the time I mashed the accelerator while already cruising at highway
speeds, and the time the car provided an extra helping of speed.
Acceleration was progressive without any drama from the engine or
gearbox, with a muted rumble emanating from the exhaust. The chassis
stayed nicely controlled at speed, allowing this large sedan to exploit
gaps in traffic in a pretty agile manner.
I was
impressed with the behavior of the suspension, even though it was a bit
floaty at times as my colleagues have noted. The softness of the
suspension doesn’t differ much between sport and normal modes, and in
both modes it managed to soak up small and large impacts nicely. The
feel of the suspension is geared towards fans of big American sedans,
but it was never wobbly or floaty at speed.
Interior
ergonomics were great even if the design was a bit predictable. The
array of electronic parking aids, I thought, was on the heavy side, but
all them (especially cross-traffic alert) proved to be helpful,
especially given the size of the C-pillar which made rear visibility a
bit of a problem. There are a lot of options and plenty of buttons up
front, in addition to an iDrive/COMAND equivalent, so it was nice to see
that not everything get buried in menus.
2015 Kia K900
Options:
VIP package including advanced smart cruise control, advance vehicle
safety management, power door latches, 12.3-inch full LCD TFT instrument
cluster, head-up display, surround view monitor, driver’s seat cushion
extension, front seat power headrests, power reclining rear seats,
ventilated rear outboard seats, lateral adjusting rear headrests, rear
seat lumbar support ($6,000)Source by Autoweek
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