By Ian Strachan.
The car I’ve just been testing has smart alloy wheels, reversing camera and parking sensors, a quality voice-activated navigation and entertainment system with Apple CarPlay and Bluetooth, hill start and lane-keeping assist, cruise control, smart black upholstery and steering wheel-mounted controls. Is it a BMW, a Mercedes, a Range Rover? No. It’s one of the smallest city cars on the road; the Kia Picanto.
The latest Kia Picanto is a small car that thinks it’s big, and it’s packed with features you’d expect to find on a car twice its size. And once you’re inside the Picanto doesn’t feel small at all. It’s spacious and comfortable.
Unlike a lot of small cars it’s nicely styled, with a new front end and a sportier look, and doesn’t feel at all cramped. Performance from the 62 bhp petrol engine is best described as “peppy”.
I test drove the three-cylinder 998 litre Picanto in ‘2’ spec (Kia keeps the spec descriptions simple) which comes at a very competitive £15,595 on the road, and I was pleasantly surprised by its zip. It cruises comfortably at motorway speeds without the sort of underbonnet screaming you sometimes get in cars of this size. And you get 54.3 miles to the gallon in mixed driving.
The five-speed manual gearshift is springy and pleasant to use, and the ride feels agile and stable with nicely rated suspension and confident cornering. It never felt as if it needed that extra gear.
But the real surprise is the interior space. Kia has pulled off a clever trick here. Sitting in the Picanto you feel as if you’re in a much larger car – certainly bigger than its city car size.
Legroom and headroom are quite adequate for front and rear passengers. The front seats are big enough to feel comfortable on a long drive, and the rear seat accommodates two adults easily – and they don’t have to be really good friends.
Open the tailgate and you’ll see how Kia has done this. The luggage area is quite small – just about large enough for one medium suitcase. Clearly to get the interior space something had to be sacrificed. That said, there’s no wheel arch intrusion so what you see is what you get. You get 255 litres of luggage space which can be increased to 1,010 litres with the rear seats folded.
That apart I like the Picanto. It has a personality all of its own and at around 3.6 metres long it will slot into the smallest parking space.
Standard equipment on this spec includes 14 inch alloy wheels, steering wheel with steering wheel mounted controls, air conditioning, navigation and audio via an eight-inch touchscreen, all-round electric windows, rear parking camera with parking sensors, electric heated door mirrors, automatic headlights, forward collision avoidance and all round airbags. Plus you get Kia’s industry-leading seven year warranty.
Cars in this class are becoming increasingly popular and the Picanto, with its high build quality and modern, appealing looks, could well cash in.
