Road Test: Kia Ceed 1.6 2 5dr
Every time you read about Kias, you’re almost certain to also read about designer Peter Schreyer, the man behind the original Audi TT. But I’m not going to talk about Schreyer’s styling of this, the second generation Cee’d, as you can look at the gallery of pics and make your own mind up.
What I do want to talk about is Kia’s European incursion — which will bring us round to the Cee’d itself shortly. I can’t think of a company that has mounted a better planned, more aggressive, or commercially successful incursion into Europe. As you well know, Kia is Korean, but its cars — specifically this new Cee’d — aren’t. This is a European car.
And not European in the same way as VW, Peugeot or Fiat. They are all national companies, bred to feed their home markets first and foremost. In their own way, this makes them a little parochial and inward-looking. Kia is European in the broadest sense of the word. It has no geographic loyalties. The C’eed I drove in Austria was designed and engineered in Germany, built in Slovakia, and registered in Spain. That alone is indicative of the company’s broader outlook. Kia genuinely seems to see Europe as a single market. The EU must love that.
Kia Europe is largely autonomous, free to design and create the cars it thinks the market wants. Its first success, back in 2007, was the original Cee’d, of which some 430,000 have been sold (and also, of course, secured itself a starring role on the Top Gear track). Now’s the time for its replacement. The temptation here for many firms would be to jazz up the looks a bit, make sure the CO2 is where it needs to be, add some new tech and send it back out to market.
Instead what we have are deep, well thought out changes — the kind you expect from an aggressive, successful company that still sees plenty of room to improve. Kia isn’t ready to consolidate yet — it’s still in the expansion phase.
So what we have is a bodyshell that’s a massive 45 per cent stiffer, which in turn allows much more careful tuning of the suspension. There’s also thicker window glass, more foam insulation in the window pillars, extra seals around the doors. Although the 2650mm wheelbase is carried over, the platform is new and the car is longer, lower and wider, plus bigger inside.
To be honest, you don’t really notice the extra few mm’s of shoulder and headroom, nor even the 40-litre larger boot. You don’t even notice the hugely upgraded interior design and quality for the first few miles. Instead, I was being quietly dazzled by the new Cee’d’s sheer refinement. It moves quietly and smoothly and expertly. It feels very professional. If the old one was white goods (and, in truth it was better than that), the new one is white goods by John Lewis.
It’s also a very nice car to be in. The ride is well padded, motorway wind noise confined to a rustle from the A-pillars. If you’re one of the vast majority who just want a family hatchback to use for your life, then this is a very nice one. Kia knows its audience, knows what pleases them.
It’s not sporty, and doesn’t pretend to be, so it seems almost unfair to have a go at it for not delivering on the thrills front. It actually copes reasonably well: good front end grip, reasonable steering accuracy, good chassis balance. It’s a well engineered car, but not an entertaining one.
Part of the blame lies with the drivetrain. The new direct injection 1.6 (no baby turbo engines for Kia yet — that surely is the next stage) is fine when surfing in the shallows, but becomes slightly boomy and harsh towards the top end.
There’s now a twin clutch gearbox too, and like the rest of the car, it does the everyday stuff unobtrusively. But you can tell this is a first effort — its reactions aren’t that sharp.
But the point is that this is a car for Kia’s core audience, those who don’t care about brand and image, but want a good, ordinary car. It’s for those who are persuaded by a seven year warranty and a good value price. Speaking of which, prices haven’t yet been announced, but given the level of progress Kia has made, it’s safe to assume that Top Gear’s current celebrity lap car will no longer be quite so reasonably priced.
Not when it can be kitted out with all manner of interior gadgets. The options lists are rife with items such as lane departure, dual zone climate, LED running lights, a panoramic sunroof, an electric driver’s seat, a digital screen to replace the central dial, an electric handbrake. All of these were fitted on our test cars, and thus all the cars I saw had more buttons on the steering wheel than the last Bentley I drove, but I was impressed by the well thought out stowage, the general ergonomic excellence. The seat was rather firm and lumpy, but that might just have been me. The boot floor is definitely rather high.
Still, these are small drawbacks and do nothing to detract from a Kia that’s now a real threat to the European mainstream. The Cee’d used to be a second rank hatch, mentioned after the Focus, Astra, Megane, 308. Not now. I still can’t believe how quickly Kia is progressing, but the new Cee’d is a direct, focused threat to every other European hatch, even the mighty VW Golf. OK, so it might not have their readily identifiable mannerisms and heritage, but neither does it have their baggage. This is a second generation European Kia. And it’s as good as pretty much anything Europe has to offer.
Kia Ceed review
Since you’ve currently only got one engine option, you’d hope it’s a good one. It’s by no means a characterful powerplant, but the 1.5-litre unit stays impressively hushed and delivers a healthy slug of torque. Kia claims 158bhp, 186lb ft and 0-62mph in 8.4secs. It’s enough for a regular hatchback: unstressed at a cruise, and able to overtake caravans and tractors without your life flashing before you. Getting it going at all though, is a problem. The Ceed suffers from a familiar Kia and Hyundai disease: soggy clutch-itus.
That sounds contagious.
Honestly, you’d be forgiven for thinking someone had installed the transmission from a 150,000-mile Honda Jazz here. There’s no biting point to be found in the clutch and the shift is notchy, so even after a week together, we were still stalling it and struggling to pull away smoothly. A Focus or a Leon simply doesn’t feel so mushy when you’re getting to grips with it.
What about the handling?
Well the ride’s mature and doesn’t suffer from that ‘hollow’ crashiness you got in the old Ceed. But there’s not much connection between driver and machine, and everything feels a bit synthesised.
It’s arguable that this doesn’t matter on a family hatch and it’s certainly far better than Kias of old. But the last little bits of chassis finesse are missing, despite the inclusion of a torque vectoring system that brakes the inside wheel in a corner.
Is that really an issue in a sedate family hatch?
Picture that one time where a back road opens up in front of you, all the drudgery of life clears away and you fire up the tarmac, adjusting the car as you’d like with either a throttle tweak or a steering shift. Not quite Vanishing Point, but you get the picture.
The Focus has this sort of manoeuvrability but the Ceed doesn’t, and it’s these fine margins that the Ceed can’t quite nail. Plus, the overly light steering means this car needs managing more at a cruise than some rivals.
Highlights from the range
the fastest
Kia Ceed 1.6T GDi ISG GT 5dr DCT
the cheapest
Kia Ceed 1.0T GDi ISG 2 5dr [Eco Pack]
the greenest
Kia Ceed 1.6 CRDi ISG 2 5dr [Eco Pack]
First drive: Kia Ceed 1.0 turbo
It’s the new Kia Ceed, the latest version of the car Tom Cruise two-wheeled around Gambon. Both it and the Proceed have enjoyed a rejig for 2015.
Kia says it’s new, we say it’s a facelift, and a very mild one on the surface. More interesting things lie beneath the subtly updated headlights and wheel designs, though.
A three-cylinder petrol turbo, called Ecoturbo, joins the engine range, with the aim of tempting a few people out of their diesels and restoring the sales balance between the two fuels to 50:50. It’s a mere 1-litre in size, like the Ecoboost you’ll find in the Focus, and comes with two power outputs, 98bhp and 118bhp. Also like the Ford, then.
There’s also a new seven-speed twin-clutch automatic gearbox, developed in house by Kia, though only available with higher powered diesels for now, and a new torque-vectoring system to tidy up the handling.
How’s the new triple?
It’s an engine all about effortlessness; it’s not brimful of character like Ford’s Ecoboost 1.0, but it’s refined, barely audible at a motorway cruise and responsive in the middle part of the rev range that you use in sensible, everyday driving.
It just blends in and does its job, while having enough power for simple overtaking or accelerating confidently down a slip road. Ceed buyers likely aren’t seeking a sports car, and the Ecoturbo should suit them just fine.
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And the fancy torque vectoring?
It’s a brake-operated system, not a million miles from McLaren’s brake-steer system in theory. Though while you can sense its operation during ambitious cornering speeds, it’s there for comfort and safety rather than turning the Ceed into a hyper-alert supercar.
Yep. Despite the addition of a more assertively styled and stiffer sprung ‘GT Line’ trim and the Ceed’s still gimmicky adjustable steering weight, this is a car refreshingly free of sporting pretension. Its ride is supple and its demeanour effortless, an approach finely in tune with the whacking great seven-year warranty that Kia is still unique in offering.
How many people still buy normal hatchbacks like this?
Lots, says Kia, claiming the C-segment this Ceed competes in as the second largest in Europe. It’s growing, in fact, with people downsizing from bigger saloon cars. As such, there’s a ton of grown-up stuff on offer to ease their transition, including an upgraded self-parking system, swish TFT dials and a 7in touchscreen media system that includes satnav updates for all seven years of that warranty.
There’s also been a focus on something called ‘sensory quality’, so there are thicker carpets to improve noise insulation and splashes of chrome across the interior on higher specs.
Does that mean it costs quite a bit?
Kias aren’t the budget option they used to be, certainly, and the Ceed battles the Focus and Golf with its ability rather than its pricetag. Things kick off below £15,000, but you’ll need to spend at least £17,445 to get a 1.0 turbo.
As stylish as the Ford and as painless to own as the VW, though, it belongs on your shortlist.