Nine years ago, I reviewed a Chevy Cruze rental with a staggering 55,000 miles on the clock. I was impressed with the way that the not-so-little Daewoo had held up, and I said as much in the review. My purpose in renting the car was to attend a press preview in Alabama for the newest-generation Sonata, which I found to be charming and off-putting in about equal measure. Having just bought a 2014 Accord, I thought that the Kia/Hyundai chaebol had leapfrogged Honda in curb appeal and features — but the smart money would be on the Honda in the long term.
Fast-forward to last night, when a remarkable series of misadventures landed me in the Detroit airport with no way home but whatever rental car I could get my hands on. The 2021 Kia K5 LXS you see above was the last car in the row of available vehicles. It stank at a distance, and the odometer looked more like a warning label:
However, as my very good friend (we’ve spoken, like, three times!) Sung Kang said in Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift… “Why are you acting like you got a choice? Get in.”
This is fundamentally a $26,000 car. For 2023, the old LX base trim has been dropped, leaving this LXS as the base. (In Honda-speak, this would be LX-S, and indeed there’s an EX up the product ladder.) It’s the replacement for the 2015 Optima which was based on the 2014 Sonata, and has been around for three model years.
The base 1.6T engine makes 180 horsepower and turns an eight-speed torque-converter automatic with a curiously traditional shift lever that could have come out of a Nineties Camry. If you’re feeling froggy, Kia would like to sell you a 290-horsepower 2.5L turbo four-banger with an 8-speed dual-clutch transmission. It would be more in keeping with the styling, which is almost hilariously Blade Runner aggressive from origami nose to currently-fashionable fastback tail with parsimonious trunk opening. At any point prior to about 2005, you could have sold this as a Ferrari.
All that aggression disappears when you open the door and encounter a typical Korean cut-price interior with just enough metal on the knobs to remind you that Kia is a premium brand nowadays. The infotainment screen has the same cheap-feeling buttons and excess black plastic you got in a 2014 Camry.
Perhaps I’ve already gotten spoiled by the always-best-in-class uConnect system in my new 300C, but I couldn’t find much to admire about the Kia touchscreen, the disconnected maze of the menus, or the general low-budget vibe of the graphics. Then again, have you looked at a Honda interior at any point in time since they started putting screens in them? If Texas Instruments had used Honda infotainment graphics, the TI 99/4A never would have gotten as far as the beige case model.
Sound quality from the no-optional-choices stereo is fair-to-middling, but Bluetooth telephony in this car is so bad as to almost not be worth using. At least part of that problem has to be credited to the road noise, which is far more “Honda” than “Acura” and therefore verges on the wearying over the course of a multi-hour road trip. It’s not wind noise — how could it be, with this shape? — but rather a chorus of unhappy mechanicals, combined with the awful thrum of Hertz’s price-driven replacement-tire choices.
There’s something sad about the fact that Kia and Hyundai are really the only Sedan True Believers left among affordable manufacturers. Honda’s latest Accord appears designed to punish the people who buy it, the Camry and Altima are in development limbo, and the domestics have fled entirely. At least Kia is trying.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the base powertrain. This is really all the engine you need in a commuter car. The engine and transmission operate in near-perfect harmony, adeptly grabbing a low gear to let the little four-banger rev and build boost when necessary. Self-reported mileage was just north of 36 miles per gallon over 205 miles of mostly freeway and fast two-lane roads. You could get better gas mileage with the old combination of K-series and CVT in the ninth-generation Accords, but not hugely so. I never wished for more power, nor was I ever anxious about getting the desired amount of forward shove on the freeway.
The chassis, too, is honest if not ambitious, with flat cornering and no surprises. If you got into this thing from any of the cute-utes or 7-passenger FWD-platform crossovers out there, you’d think it was a Lotus Elise.
All the touch points on the car, including the steering wheel and shifter, bore little trace of the abuse to which they have surely been subjected. I rather think Kia has the better of Honda and Nissan here, if not Toyota. One benefit of making the touch points shiny to begin with: they don’t “shine up” with use. Nobody told Volkswagen this, apparently. Most Audis have more visible wear at 20,000 miles than this K5 did at 53,000.
Should you roll the dice on a K5 over a Camry or Accord? I think it’s the most enjoyable vehicle of the three, particularly if you’re comparing the low-level trims. That being said, I am always suspicious of turbo engines in everyday cars, especially if they are Korean. No sane human being thinks this K5 will outlast a Camry Hybrid or even a Camry 2.4. At the very least you’ll buy a new turbo around the 100k mark, if not before.
Still. It has some style and it’s not bad at anything. I think it makes the most sense as an upsell (downsell?) to people who would normally drop $30k on a CR-V, Escape, Tuscon, whatever. This is more car for less money. You’ll pay less to run it and enjoy yourself a bit more, on rural roads at least.
Your humble author believes that the peak for mid-sized sedans was the 9th generation Accord and “XV50” Camry. They were nice to drive, they were cheap to operate, and they were built for long-term durability. It’s been all downhill since then at the Honda and Toyota shops. Against those two paragons of mid-sized virtue, the current K5 is a little flimsier, a little more gimmicky, a lot less bulletproof. Value for money, combined with exotic styling, is the attraction here. And it’s held up pretty well in rental-mule use. For $25,000 and some change, what more do you want?
Kia K5 LXS: Starts at $25,390
Pros: Powertrain is better than decent, styling feels upmarket, materials are durable
Cons: Turbo/smallbore longevity is a question mark. A Camry is hardly any more expensive. Driving a Kia still sends a message that fails to resonate with the social strivers or the Dave Ramsey crowd.
Sum-up: As the only manufacturer trying to advance the FWD family sedan, Kia deserves some goodwill here, and that’s mostly rewarded by the K5.
180 horsepower seems like a lot for a car that size considering I only have 150 in my presumably heavier and less aerodynamic CX-5 (and I definitely feel slow next to the 6.2L Silverados and Ecoboost F-150s and Hemi Rams I'm in traffic with, too). I wonder if I'm having more fun in my silly tall wagon, though.
More cats in cars pictures please.