It’s super Stonic!
I won’t be coloured by the shades... this Kia is a handsome new addition to the B-SUV segment FIRST LOOK KIA STONIC
HAS there ever ben a shift in mood like it? Since 2012, Europe has fallen in love with SUV and crossover models, with a commensurate fall in sales of the more traditional hatch and estate bodystyles.
In those five years, sales of SUVs have increased by 62%, with the bulk of them coming in what the industry calls the BSUV and C-SUV segments, but which you and I know as compact and medium crossovers.
The B-SUV segment is particularly crowded, with 12 models already on sale, including the dominant Renault Captur and its stable mate the Nissan Juke. Now, though, there’s a new addition, the KIA Stonic, which arrives here on 27 October.
I was in Berlin during the week for a first drive of the car, and the initial visual impression was a good one, even in yellow, a colour I normally would shy away from like a cat from water. There’s a restyled tigernose grille, so while you know it’s definitely a KIA, the Stonic also has a personality all its own, underlined by the chunky, low air intakes. From the side, the short front and rear overhangs, 17-inch alloy wheels, a tapering and sporty roofline, roof rails and bulbous wheel arches emphasise its SUV credentials, while the 3D-effect rear LED lights and skid pad make it look very much as if it could shoot off road any second.
Don’t get carried away, though. KIA is not stupid, and has no desire to cannibalise sales of its bigger Sportage (207,000 sold in Europe last year), so unlike that car, the Stonic is available in front-wheel drive only. If you want genuine 4x4 pragmatism, you’re going to have to move up the food chain.
Customisation is another feature we have come to expect in this segment, so there is a choice of nine body colours and five complementary roof colours, allowing for a total of more than 20 combinations (and, yes, I know, you might think there should be more, but KIA has certain limits on what colours it will allow you pair, and the emphasis in very much on ‘complementary’, not bonkers).
That customisation extends to the roomy cabin, where you can select the dash and door detailing in four colours, as well as seats in artificial leather or cloth. The fascia is cleverly arranged with strict horizontal principles and a seven-inch touchscreen infotainment and navigation system. There’s lots of storage around the cabin, though the boot volume of 352 litres is only average; fortunately, with the rear bench dropped, you can increase that to 1,155 litres, which is good for a car just over four metres in length.
The final piece of the jigsaw everyone demands nowadays is full connectivity, and here you get USB port in the centre console and another for the rear seats (handy for when your kids are playing with tablets in the back), Bluetooth, and Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
The test routes were mostly flat and in urban areas, though Berlin has a surprisingly large green belt on the outskirts and you can be in open countryside very quickly. Because of that, it’s hard to judge how the Stonic will react on country roads in Ireland, but my suspicion is that it will do so rather well. The body is rigid and the suspension is tough without being harsh, and the handling felt as good as anything in the mass-market end of this class.
The 1.0-litre turbo petrol is a cracking engine, putting out 118hp, the highest output in the range, but it is available only in the top K4 trim at €24,599, which will make it a relatively niche buy, one suspects.
Fortunately, you can get into a Stonic for a lot less than that, as the entry-level K1 trim 1.2-litre petrol checks in at a bargain €18,599. There’s also a 1.4-litre 98hp petrol engine (from €21,099 in the K2 trim), and a 1.6-litre diesel in K2 trim from €23,099. If you’re wedded to diesel, it might be time to think again as petrol makes a comeback.
So what are these K trims, then? Well, for Stonic, KIA Ireland has abandoned its EX, TX, GT-Line and other structures to simplify the process and may roll that out across all models eventually. As you move up the numbers, you get more bang for your buck, as features such as automatic light control, push-button start, advanced driver assistance systems, exterior chrome and rear parking sensors are added to the entrylevel standards that include front and rear skid plates, privacy glass, speed limiter and cruise control. The other good news is that KIA here has included a spare wheel, rather than a tyre repair kit.
KIA expects to sell 1,000 Stonics next year and I don’t think that’s overly ambitious. It’s a handsome car that drives well and it has a lot of kerbside appeal.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The show, certainly in its early years, rode a bumpy road dotted with obstacles, ranging from temporary inconveniences to one major occurrence that could have ended it altogether.
We were only three days into shooting the first episode when Ray Butt slipped a disc and was laid off for three weeks. We ended up having three directors in just a matter of days, which doesn’t do much for your sense of stability. I remember standing on the set and feeling comprehensively deflated.
But, by the end of the first season, the ship had steadied and the show seemed to have played well with studio audiences. The only thing left to do was to sit back and wait for the nation to swoon in ecstasy and wonder.
Plumpf! Another deflation. The first series of Only Fools generated a reaction which these days we would probably describe using the word ‘meh’.
Certainly, none of the critics had been inspired to write a review that said: ‘Heed my words — one day, 24 million people will be swarming all over this.’
It was fantastically dispiriting. Still more troubling, with the future of the show by no means guaranteed, indifference seemed to be coming off the relevant BBC executives in misty waves. But then, all of us involved in Only Fools were used to a touch of corporate coldness.
At some point during the screening of that first series, the BBC had decided to decorate the foyer and main corridors of Television Centre in London with giant colour pictures celebrating the current comedy output.
Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles were on the wall, beaming out from the set of To The Manor Born. Kenny Everett was there, Dave Allen and Ronnie Corbett also.
‘How great,’ I thought as I walked through. ‘Any moment now I’m going to see Only Fools And Horses saluted among this illustrious company.’
Wrong. We were nowhere in sight. John Sullivan, in particular, felt slighted by this omission and complained bitterly about it.
I don’t know whether it was the BBC’s reaction to our working classness, or our working-class reaction to them — probably a bit of both. But we never quite shook off the feeling that the BBC was slightly embarrassed by us — urchins with grubby mugs at the gates of the big house.
Indeed, a certain amount of reserve characterised the Corporation’s relationship with the show even once it was successful.
None of the actors in the series, Nick and me included, was ever put on a retainer, which would have locked you in place and given you a bit of job security.
When it was time to take a decision on a third series, things were definitely trembling in the balance. The first and second series had generated audiences of between seven and nine million, the kind of numbers for which channels these days would bite off your hands as far as the elbows.
But this was back in the terrestrialonly period, when people had fewer distractions, and it was still a good few million short of what the BBC bosses would have been hoping for from a prime-time sitcom.
John Howard Davies, then director of comedy, summoned me, Nick and Ray to a meeting in his office.
‘Over here I have some scripts for a third series of Only Fools And Horses,’ he told us. ‘And over here I have some viewing figures for the second series.
‘The scripts on my right are telling me we should definitely make another series. But the figures on my left are telling me we should definitely pull it.’
There was a silence while Nick, Ray and I shifted uneasily. Then Davies said: ‘Well, b***s to the figures on my left — we’ll go with the scripts on my right.’
Cue rejoicing. God bless John Howard Davies and his b***s. Series five and six would see audiences of between 16 million-18 million, with Christmas specials peaking all the way up to those record-breaking 20 million-plus levels.
Out of the 12 most-watched episodes in British television history, a third — four of them — are from Only Fools And Horses. Part three of the 1996 Christmas special (where Del and Rodney become millionaires, thanks to an antique watch) is the most watched programme of all time.
Yet the show would have been chopped in its infancy if Davies had been a different kind of executive. It just wouldn’t happen like that nowadays, when the BBC feels obliged to join battle with the commercial operations and the whole world seems to be chasing numbers rather than excellence.
OF COURSE, luck like that isn’t inexhaustible. The show had arguably truly hit its stride when it was knocked flat on its back by a major upset — the worst it would know in its lifetime.
The last I ever saw of Lennard Pearce was outside the magistrates’ court in Kingston, South-West London, in December 1984. We were filming, I hasten to add, rather than responding to a summons. Four days later, his landlady found him lying at the foot of the stairs to his flat after a heart attack.
John Sullivan visited him in hospital with a replica of Trotter, the china pig that used to be placed in the control room at our studio sessions and which it was Lennard’s habit to touch it for luck before every show. Sadly, the pottery pig couldn’t work its magic this time, and Lennard suffered a second heart attack.
The following Sunday morning, Nick and I were getting made up when Ray Butt came in and stood in the doorway.
He didn’t say anything. He just shook his head and walked away.
We had spent the week fearing the worst, and here it was. We knew that Lennard’s health hadn’t been the best. He was 69 and had been
taking pills for hypertension. But the actuality of it — the finality of it — was overwhelming.
Neither Nick nor I knew what to say or do with ourselves. I remember just sitting silently in a chair for a long time, trying to absorb it and failing.
At that point, I thought the show was probably over. A meeting was called and when I walked into the room it was on the pretty firm assumption that we were going to talk about the exit strategy.
But that wasn’t the case. The BBC wanted to keep it going. I didn’t know how, but what I did know was that John and I quickly crushed the idea that some bright spark had of getting in a lookalike to play Grandad.
Just blithely sailing on like that, as if nothing had happened, would have been an insult to Lennard that none of the cast would have been able to live with.
It was John who suggested that if Only Fools was going to survive, then he should write Grandad’s death into the show, give him a proper funeral scene and fittingly mark the exit of his character.
What he came up with was probably his greatest and most poignant piece of writing for the show.
Back at the flat after the TV funeral, Del is playing mine host, inspiring a bewildered and angry Rodney to accuse him of getting over Grandad’s death too quickly.
‘Get over it? What a plonker you really are, Rodney,’ replies Del. ‘Get over it? I ain’t even started, bruv. And do you know why? Because I don’t know how to, that’s why. I’m Del Boy, ain’t I? Good old Del Boy. He’s got more bounce than Zebedee.
‘I’ve always played the tough boy. I’ve played it for so long now that I don’t know how to be anything else. I don’t even know how to . . . oh, it don’t matter.
‘Bloody families — I’m finished with them. What do they do to you? They drag you down and then they break your bloody heart.’
After which Rodney, who has been utterly silenced by this torrent, whispers: ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m very proud of what we did in that episode. It suggested that there were broader, more complex aspects of life that the show could now go on and meet.
Which it duly did, in the form of Del’s relationship with Raquel and Rodney’s relationship with Cassandra, looking at marriage and birth and all of the big stuff.
The reason the show has become part of the national psyche, I’m convinced, is because ultimately, as at that moment after the funeral, it was about real people behaving in real ways.
ABOVE all, that episode enabled us to feel that the programme had done right by Lennard. We missed him terribly, and I still do.
But it’s some slight consolation to think that part of his legacy to Only Fools was that greater depth and breadth and confidence that it had thereafter.
[The character of Grandad’s long-lost younger brother, ‘Uncle Albert’ — played by Buster Merryfield — was introduced in the funeral episode and his final appearance in a full episode of the show was in 1996].
At Lennard’s actual funeral, which took place a few weeks earlier, we were all asked to stand and sing a hymn at one point. I opened my hymn book and took a breath, only to discover that the relevant page was missing.
A few of us had a quiet giggle about it there and then, and I knew Lennard would utterly have approved. It seemed like an eminently suitable Trotter-like note to see him out on.
O ONLY Fools And Stories: From Del Boy To Granville, Pop Larkin To Frost is David Jason’s second book on his life as a leading actor. The latest autobiography is the follow-up to David Jason:My Life. The new book is published by Century, and will be available in all good bookshops across Ireland from October 5.