The Amanti doesn’t fit in with the other fine (and handsome) offerings of Kia. They should euthanize this three-legged dog.

What a glaring contrast with the beautiful Azera from Hyundai.

It drove smoothly, had decent power to cope with air conditioning & some mild hills, and was plenty roomy. Just put a bag over her head and all is good.

Speaking of Kia this thing actually doesn’t look quite as bad as Kia Borrego sounds, apparently Borrego is Portuguese for “Sheep up to one year of age; Good and pacific person excessively; Very tame animal”. So it’s a fluffy and comfortable, quiet SUV which just also happens to sound like a nasty disease? This name works about as well as Mitsubishi Pajero does in Spain.

The VW dealership simply didn’t have a clue about the high-end customer service that VW was promising for the Phaeton and the Tourag. He’d have to fight them every time for a loaner car (they’d tell him they didn’t give loaner cars and he’d have to pull out his paperwork); they’d always forget to wash his car, or worse (they washed it with a window open so the kid doing it could listen to his stereo). Note that I’m saying nothing about problems with the vehicle itself – it’s about the ownership experience.

The car itself may be OK, but when you start to enter the near-luxury price range, you also have to compete with Acura/BMW/Lexus/Caddy/Infiniti/Jaguar/Mercedes customer service levels.

I don’t believe that Kia or Hyundai are going to get many converts from buyers of those brands, which raises a question for me:

Who IS the customer for this car?

as for the ford panther cars, i dont get them at all. heavy, floatsome, bad steering, lousy acceleration and horrendous milage. They are even bad taxis. Impossable to get in to and outof.

i love the studebaker hawk too. im not sure i think this one looks like it tho.

This would certainly make about as much sense as the fake fender vents that seem to be sprouting from the flanks of many cars these days…

General Motors is now losing money and thousands of workers are laid off.

If General Motors wasn’t so STUPID to pull those electric cars in California they will be the leading electric car manufacturer in the world

Hyundai is also planning to built Hybrid cars and please accept them for what they are.

Daniel Dingel a Filipino who invented a water powered car 4 decades ago. he retired from NASA and went back to the Philippines to invent a Hydrogen car but the 2 government never knowledge his invention and still his name is unknown.

Coincidence? I think not!

At 32k, this car is a bummer, a swing and a miss, a fumble on the two-yard-line. Kia must be nuts to think it will sell, as it completely departs from the “value” theme of the brand. Why would anybody consider this over an Azera (unless the rebates are flying).

If Kia insists on having a car above the Optima, borrow the Azera platform from Hyundai and start from there.

And psarhjinian man, quick, edit your post before it’s too late. You DO NOT want to piss off the PPC (Panther Platform Cult).

Agree with everything you said about those cars though, they are kind of terrible but when you consider that at the end of it’s lifetime you could get a decently optioned new Grand Marquis for 18K or even less if you looked around. Maybe at 20K+ it’s not such a good car but given it’s attributes in the sub-20K range I think it’s pretty exemplary (but then again this was when gas was still 2.00 dollars a gallon.)

Hopefully this will manage to placate the PPC.

Think of all the cars that sell for $32K – there’s some real live gems in there – stuff with quite a bit of machismo like a Charger R/T – stuff with a brand name like Cadillac CTS – a bit more and you can be a BMW or C Class Zombie.

Might have been better to produce a kind of Impala LTZ that would sell for $23K – ironically that part of the market is actually LESS crowded with really competitive, really satisfying and feature packed cars.

You have to think outside of the box when considering cars like these. It seems like a bargain when compared to an E-class or whatever else, but not so much when you look around a bit more.

It really looks like the E-class. I am not sure what model but they look exactly the same.
The only thing it makes a differencr is the grill.

The front looks like an E-Class and the rear end looks like a crown victory the only thing is missing is the plate that says “Livery”

The price is unacceptable I rather buy the 2009 Mitsubishi Ralliart with almost the same horsepower of the Evo X and very very fun to drive.

My friend who said I rather go to soccer games driving a 08 Lancer than driving a Van or SUV.

I feel different drivng a Lancer than being called a soccer dad.

I realize that the effort was intended to borrow from Mercedes, but the actual result is appallingly bad, producing one of the ugliest cars on the road today.

That is, without a doubt, the worst front end of any sedan sold in America. It’s a stark contrast to Hyundai’s team, which did a very nice job of ripping off…er, I mean borrowing from the S-class. The Kia guys down the hall apparently didn’t graduate as high up in the class.

In other words, it’s a styling abomination.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/1996-99_Mercedes-Benz_E-Class_Sedan.jpg/800px-1996-99_Mercedes-Benz_E-Class_Sedan.jpg

And the Jaguar S-Type:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/%2705_Jaguar_S-Type_%28Hudson%29.JPG/800px-%2705_Jaguar_S-Type_%28Hudson%29.JPG

The KIA is much more similiar to the Mercedes. From three standpoints (my perspective):

1. The way the fender and hood (of the KIA and MB) rolls over the headlight is less curved than the Jaguar and further outboard.

2. The headlights (both pairs) are more oval-shaped than circular on the KIA and MB than the Jag.

3. The secondary lights (city/highbeam) size is relatively smaller on the KIA and MB, than on the Jag. In a scaled manner.

I apologize for being nitpicky…I actually studied this for a while when I had parked the E next to an Amanti a year or so back. A rip-off is a rip-off. And really, the Amanti would be much better if the grill would have been a bit smaller or more refined.

EDIT: I was looking at a few pictures of the Amanti, and it looks like the grill is wider than before. I also kinda liked the previous dashboard a bit. More fitting with the vehicle, a long stretching cowl like an older Town Car.

Still, for the money I’d get a Five Hundred or the Mercury version. Especially after I saw, locally, about one that rolled 9 times and the roof didn’t cave. And the driver got out with just some scratches and soreness. Add in AWD for the Rockies and a rather efficient drivetrain…you’ve got one helluva large cruiser.

Hyundai and Kia really really need to figure out what they are going to do with those two brands. Back when Len Hunt went to Kia (for all of 5 minutes) I remember hearing that Kia would be the sporty/youth brand and that Hyundai would provide easy chairs on wheels. Yet Hyundai is bringing over the I30 Estate as the Elantra Touring with a “suspension tuned for added feel and responsiveness”, and is also working on that Genesis-based RWD sports coupe. Is Kia destined to only have the leftovers and rebadged Hyundais? Is the Soul going to be enough to differentiate them from Hyundai?

I can’t agree more with this assessment. Hyundai seems to be doing a GM with it’s brand management. There’s the occasional glimmer of sanity (Rondo, Genesis sedan) but there’s an awful lot of stupid.

Anyone who thinks this car is a worthy competitor to the Grand Marquis doesn’t know what he is talking about. Comparing this POS front-driver to the body-on-frame V8 RWD panther is pathetic.

The Panthers are awful cars. They’re slow yet still thirsty, the suspension is a bad combination unsettled and sloppy, the steering response is best described as “eventually”, the usable space is quite poor, the seats uncomfortable and the passenger crash performance is wretched, especially for such a massive vehicle. Sure, the cop-spec versions handle ok, but the ride is even worse.

Oh, and aside from being fixable with a sledgehammer and duct tape, they’re not actually that reliable. Electronics, engine components and subsidiary systems are problematic next to a industry-standard competitors. But yes, when they do break, they’re cheap and easy to fix.

I’d take the Amanti over a Panther-platform car any day, especially if it was a personal purchase and definitely if I had no intention of doing my own maintenance. The Panther platform is a good car for fleets, just as the Ford F550 is a solid work truck and the Lotus Elise is a good track car Outside of their niche, they’re really bad choices.

Lincoln buyers are LOYALISTS. They won’t buy any product made outside FoMoCo

You may have a point, although the amount of Amantis I’ve seen driving around down here in the left lane at 45 mph of a 60 mph highway may say otherwise…no offence now.

The only E-Class styling I see in this car is the grille, other than that its all Jaguar: 4 point headlights, curved roofline, distinct C-pillar shape, cropped rear end. Wait a minute…that last picture of the Amanti’s read end, looks kinda like a Town Car from that rear 3/4 look.

I still believe people in the market for this car don’t really care which wheels drive the vehicle, as long as the ride is floaty, supple, semi-luxurious and quiet….sounds like a Linmercuik alright.