Make sure you pick the right Picanto
Chris rescues his road test – by ditching the Picanto ‘2’ for a car that’s €4,000 more (and a hundred times better)
If there’s one thing you should do for someone you love over the coming weeks, take them to see Dunkirk. It is spectacular in an overtly unspectacular fashion. I guarantee you’ll come away not only with a huge lump in your throat but a whole host of 21st-century guilt swirling around your head.
The overarching conclusion I came to was that, if today our lives are not truly terrible for a specific reason – ie, notwithstanding serious illness, loss or misfortune – they must be relatively fantastic. Because none of us is standing on a beach knee-deep in water, having not eaten for days, waiting for a Navy boat that isn’t coming, while being bombed every hour with nothing to protect us other than a tin hat.
Now bear with me on this one, but I believe the precise opposite is the case when it comes to modern cars. If a car cannot be at least a bit fantastic in one aspect or another, it must therefore be terrible. Because cars are so brilliant nowadays that it takes something really special to stink the place out. OK, you have been warned.
The biggest billboard in the world is the Kia one on the M4 overpass into London. Not that it is actually a billboard at all. It is actually the whole top floor of Kia’s flagship UK showroom. Except what they have done, ever since it opened, is cleverly employ this entire huge, glass box to house a massive 3D installation promoting whatever the latest Kia model happens to be.
I pass this building every weekday at around 5.30am on my way to work and it really is extremely impressive.
Kia’s usual promotional formula consists of six to ten identical cars suspended at various funky angles in front of a gigantic, stadium-style screen playing a sexy film featuring the star of their show. Which, for the past month or so, has been the all-new Kia Picanto. Which I have to say looks absolutely fantastic.
So imagine my excitement when my boss here informed me that this week’s review car was the very same Picanto.
‘Nice,’ I thought, ‘I wonder if it drives half as good as it looks?’ That was my first mistake.
The star cars that can be seen dazzling the daily London commuters as they try to adhere to the newly imposed 40mph average speed limit are all Picanto GT-Line (or GT-Line S) models, each painted in superhappy, GT-style red, white and black. Almost exact copies of the VW Up! Beats.
The car I was sent, however, was the Kia Picanto ‘2’, which as the name suggests is one up from the ‘1’ and one down from the ‘3’, mediocrity personified. All three of which pale miserably in comparison with the GT models.
Not only that, but my ‘2’ came in Seventies metallic brown.
Immediately and comprehensively underwhelmed, I took several emergency deep breaths in an attempt to reboot my funk with regards to what I was meant to spend the next 72 hours driving around in. But it was too late. The rest of the car was just as disappointing, if not worse.
For a start, the interior was almost entirely black. Like it was dressed for its own funeral. Who decorates their house with black wallpaper, black doors and black curtains? No one! Because black is depressing. Picasso isn’t famous for his black period, he’s famous for his Blue Period.
When hypnotherapists want to allay the fears of patients facing their phobias, they don’t say, ‘Imagine a moonless night where you can’t see your hand in front of your face’. They say, ‘Imagine a cool, calm, deep-blue bottomless lagoon’.
Not only is the Picanto ‘2’ unbearably depressing and oppressive visually, all the interior surfaces are ugly and hard. It’s as if Kia has gone out of its way to make this car as unattractive as possible.
Surely it can’t be any worse to drive, then? OK, well don’t hold your breath. What about a city car that’s better on the motorway than it is around town? Surely that’s not right. The thing is, the ‘2’ is pretty woeful from the off. First and second gear are relatively short and jerky and then when you go to change up to third, it’s like there’s nothing there, as if the gearbox fell out 100 yards back down the road.
As for overtaking, if you want to scare your family half to death, either go to a theme park or try winding this baby up to the required revs and attempt to pass the vehicle in front. No chance. The longer third, fourth and fifth gears may well help your fuel economy but the world may well have ended before you get to where you’re going.
Am I being overly mean? Just to make sure, I did something I’ve never done before. I asked Kia if they could swap the Picanto ‘2’ for a GT-Line S, just for one day. Cut to 24 hours later. Well, thank goodness we did that. This is more like it. Look at those sophisticated light clusters front and rear. The chrome trim. Twin exhausts. Tinted windows and sports rims. Dashes and flashes of red leather and futuristic carbon to jazz up the cockpit. I’m already smiling. Hats off to Steve, head of Kia PR, for dropping it off in person – a shoo-in for employee of the month.
He even left me a Post-it note on
THE INTERIOR WAS BLACK... LIKE IT WAS DRESSED FOR ITS OWN FUNERAL
the steering wheel to tell me that a racy new Picanto Turbo will be available by the end of this year.
There’s bonus twin-level storage space in the boot. Chunky, heated leather sport seats up front. A heated leather steering wheel. The driver now has a much-welcome centre armrest that doubles as extra storage space. The climate controls have evolved into semi-digital. There’s keyless ignition, an electric sunroof and blind. A touchscreen infotainment system with tons of extra features includes sat-nav and Apple CarPlay.
Then there’s the four-cylinder, 1.25litre engine, which – hip, hip hooray – provides some much-needed poke.
This is it a much better car all round. A whole new world for just €4,000 more. I know it wasn’t the car I was meant to review, but sometimes it’s more useful not to play by the rules. I didn’t get where I am today...
OK. I’ll leave it there.