RUMBLE SEAT/DAN NEIL
After a nice stretch, Kia comes up short
The carmaker stumbles with Sedona. Nice trimmings can hide only so
much.
By Dan Neil, Automotive critic Dan Neil can be reached at dan.neil@
latimes.com.
May 31, 2006


THE Kia Sedona minivan is a huge steaming pile of who cares, and I for
one couldn't be more relieved. I was beginning to worry that the Korean
carmakers - Kia and its corporate parent Hyundai - could disgorge
vast quantities of handsome and precision-engineered vehicles pretty
much at will, and sell them for the price of gum. Consider, for
example, the absurdly overachieving Hyundai Sonata and Azera sedans,
and even Kia's indecently decent Optima. For those considering holy
orders, there's even the nifty Kia Rio - if poverty and obedience are
giving you trouble, at least you'll have chastity locked up.

But the Kia Sedona - a cut-rate riff on Hyundai's 2007 Entourage
minivan - puts the planets back in their rightful orbits, at least
temporarily. Here are the tragic trim pieces, wavering seams and
maddening rattles we used to expect from the Koreans. The whole thing
feels as if it were assembled at gunpoint.

The Sedona's dishabille is all the more noticeable in the presence of
its competition, the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna, two minivans
with the kind of polished execution that one associates with regimental
color guards. Our Sedona EX test vehicle didn't have the of-a-piece,
close-weave feeling of those vehicles. It felt, in a word, immature. In
a hyphenated word, half-baked. The turned seams in the seat upholstery
were puckered. The wood trim was made from that exotic species of
hardwood, Polystyrene ironicus.

Worst of all, it rattled. I hate rattles. There was something big and
heavy juddering in the back of our test van during the week I had it. I
climbed back there and tried to isolate the noise. Was it a second-row
seat not quite snapped into its mooring? Was it a bulkhead panel?
Something was definitely not connected and I finally concluded the
noise was coming from a coupling between the left rear multi-links and
the steel unit-body. It was the most egregious among many noises the
Sedona made. I made one of my own: I groaned every time I got into it.

Let me set the table a bit: This is the second-generation Sedona, and
this time round Kia has taken dead aim at the heart of minivan-dom. The
Sedona has grown nearly 8 inches in length - putting it on par
dimensionally with Odyssey, Sienna and Dodge's Grand Caravan - while
dropping, Janet Jackson-style, a bunch of ugly fat. Thanks to a new
alloy-block engine, a stiffer and lighter steel monocoque and other
dietary measures, the vehicle now weighs in

at 4,387 pounds (more fully loaded). Said 3.8-liter V6 is a very decent
piece, putting out 244 hp and 253 pound-feet of torque, much of it
distributed nicely across the tach, thanks to the variable-valve
cylinder heads.

So, on a power-to-weight basis, the new Sedona is certainly competitive
with the best in its class and miles beyond its thunder-thighed
forebear. Nor can you complain about the vehicle's five-speed automatic
transmission. The Sedona slurps between gears easily, kicks down into
passing gear willingly enough and generally offers an inoffensive level
of drivability. Indeed, about the only complaint I have with the
powertrain is the fact it prefers premium unleaded. Oddly, Kia says you
can use regular gas in the Sedona; however, horsepower and torque
values decline slightly. The EPA fuel economy rating is 18/25
city/highway miles per gallon.

As part of the weight-saving program, the Sedona was given multi-link
independent rear suspension, which theoretically gives the vehicle
livelier handling. This remains theoretical. The Sedona stops, turns
and corners with all the eagerness of a DMV employee at 4:56 p.m. on a
Friday. However, you have to commend Kia for making ABS, traction
control and stability control standard equipment. Vehicles like this,
that are likely going to convey children, need additional layers of
electronic safety aids as standard.

The interior is rote minivan design - front and mid-row captain's
chairs with armrests and, in the rear, a three-position 60/40 bench
seat that can be folded flush with the floor. When the rear bench seat
is deployed, the recess in the floor can be used for cargo. The mid-row
seats can be removed, wrestled croc-hunter style, from their floor
latches. The vehicle is utterly lousy with beverage holders. If you
find yourself ferrying a lot of lapsed alcoholics, this is your
minivan.

As for exterior styling, the Kia has some.

Look, let's not beat about the bush. This vehicle is about value, which
is to say, features per cubic dollar. In fact, this is the modus
operandi for most of the current crop of Korean-badged cars: Give
people laundry lists of standard features on the cheap and button the
deal up with an eons-long warranty, and they will be more forgiving of
minor flaws in design and execution. To that end, the Sedona EX
($26,265) is conspicuously well-equipped: 17-inch wheels, fog lights,
heated mirrors, power rear quarter windows, eight-way power driver seat
and a decent audio system. If you throw an additional $5,000 at the
Sedona, you get the works: 13-speaker Infinity surround-sound audio
system with in-dash six-disc changer; overhead DVD player; power
sliding doors, sunroof and lift gate; and heated leather seats, among
other things.

This is a level of soapy luxe that other minivans in this price range
can't offer. Combine with the 10-year powertrain warranty and five-star
crash ratings, and the Sedona starts to look

pretty good on paper. But if things went as well as they do on paper,
Iraq would be the 51st state.

If I were in charge of employee morale at Toyota or Honda, I would let
them dance around the Sedona like a maypole at the company picnic. And
then I would send them right back to the office. The Sedona is a rare
fumble from what is an aggressively improving Korean automaking
industry. Kia will introduce a short wheelbase version of the Sedona
this fall. And after that, in spring 2007, they'll roll out - with
perfect timing - the Rondo compact MPV, a tasty-looking Mazda5-sized
space wagon.

It's a rough business, all right. When Honda and Toyota's guys are just
putting on their

lab coats in the morning, rest

assured, the Hyundai and Kia guys are already on their second pot of
kimchi.