KIA's Build-Quality has Improved

Today I sat in a 2007 KIA Optima. It was a rental car with over 23,000 miles on it, but I would have believed it had only the 634 miles the trip computer was reading. Rental cars generally are treated much worse than the cars people buy, but this car had held up amazingly well. The only wear on the car was a 3 inch long scratch on the right side of the rear bumper. The interior was clean, solid, and well built. Just 3 years ago a KIA Optima would be in very bad shape after 23,000 rental car miles. 

The interior of this $17,000 LX four cylinder base model also seemed to be better than the $20,000 base model Toyota Camry's. The Optima has a more powerful 162hp 2.4L in line 4 than the Camry's 158hp 2.4L. A place the Camry is better is in the fact that it is slightly longer and got a crash test rating from the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) of Good for frontal and side impact tests, but Marginal for whiplash protection. The Optima is rated Good for frontal impact and whiplash protection tests, but Acceptable for side impact. The reliability of the KIA may even be better than the Toyota's, because KIA's sister company, Hyundai now make cars more reliable than some Toyota vehicles.

 

There are however, 2 big problems for the Optima. The first is the now very old 185hp 2.7L V6 engine. The second is the Hyundai Sonata, which for 2009 gets a 175hp version of the 2.4L engine (versus the Optima's 162hp) and Hyundai-KIA's new 3.3L V6 that for 2009 models has 249hp (up from 234hp). The Hyundai also uses a different and larger platform, gets the same crash test ratings, has stability control as standard, and costs only $1000 more. A year and a half ago we test drove both 4 cylinder and V6 versions of the Sonata. The four cylinder felt like it needed more power, which it now has. The V6 was very good, it felt powerful, solid, and made the car quite fun. With the 234hp Car and Driver magazine did 0-60mph in 6.6 seconds, faster than a BMW 745i and with 249hp it will be closer to 6.3 seconds. This means the Hyundai is most likely a better car. I have heard that the Optima has a more fun to drive chassis than the Sonata's when it has the same engine. Either car is no longer bad like many people think, they're actually very good cars.