OBJECT OF DESIRE
Neil Lyndon is caught unawares by the new Kia XCeed, which meshes superb build quality with the sort of speed and handling you don’t normally find in an SUV The build quality in this Kia strikes me as being just as good as that in Audi’s A4 Allroad
A sparkling review of the new Kia X Ceed, an SUV which took petrolhead Neil Lyndon by surprise
Arecent television advertisement for the new Kia XCeed struck uncomfortably close to home. It featured a man looking at an XCeed on his own TV and saying something like, ‘I didn’t know that car was out now.’
Then we see his wife, kids, neighbours – even the dog – strike their foreheads in disbelief that they can be around the only man in the world who isn’t aware of this obvious fact. The camera then zooms out to give us a view of his housing development, where bright yellow/gold XCeeds are parked on every drive and running up and down the street in droves.
I was that man. And, as it happened, that was exactly the colour of our test car.
Until it was delivered recently to our house for a week’s test, I hadn’t realised the XCeed – first seen at the Geneva motor show last year – was already on sale. Nor did I have any understanding how excellent (ahem) it would be. Single-handedly, I turned the TV ad into reality.
This car is engaging and unusual on first sight. A handsome, lithe, sporty, five-door coupe/estate body is girded with plastic wheel arch reinforcements and underbody armour. A rear spoiler and five-spoke 18-inch alloy wheels enhance the sense of purpose.
Kia advertises this car as ‘an urban crossover utility vehicle … which combines compact SUV practicality with the sporty packaging and engaging handling of a hatchback’. Much of that description is bang on the money but, to my mind, there is next to nothing about this car that deserves to be saddled with the SUV initials (especially since it lacks any four-wheel drive powers). They normally signify clumsiness, dreary sameness and overall pointlessness. None of those sobriquets applies to the XCeed. I would say it’s more like a five-door sports estate.
From the moment you open the door, you can feel the profound build quality which has been common to all Kias for many years now but which they seem to deepen and extend with every model. Having recently enjoyed an Audi A4 allroad, I can honestly say – hand on heart – that the build quality in this Kia strikes me as being just as good.
The same goes for the driving experience. Switching on the Sport option for suspension and transmission through the seven-speed automatic box genuinely adds a remote touch of the hot hatch or GTI to this comfortable five-seat family car with a good size boot. Corners can be negotiated with relish. Overtakes are a breeze. A healthy belt of 242Nm of torque or pulling power from its 138bhp 1.4 litre turbo petrol engine delivers 0-60mph acceleration in comfortably below 10 seconds.
Kia seem to have brought a hint of their highperformance Stinger coupe to the composition of the XCeed, especially in the suspension end of the business. In the process, they have produced a truly unusual, desirable box of tricks.
After a week, I even found I had learned to live with that body colour without my eyeballs peeling. It’s officially named Quantum Yellow and, despite the TV ad giving the impression that all XCeeds are clad in this garish hue, it’s only available on the top-spec First Edition version of the car, which is what we were lent.
A honeycomb pattern of bright yellow lines was also woven through the faux leather and black cloth covers of the seats. Otherwise, the cabin is largely what you’d expect of a model that has been extracted out of the current, excellent Ceed. Everything inside this car works a treat, just as it does there.
Average fuel consumption of almost 40mpg (even given some pretty hard driving) and all-in purchase price of £29,995 round out a package that is so desirable overall that I’d be perfectly happy if Kia left the XCeed permanently on my drive – even if all the neighbours do already have one.