Or is that Fortefied? Anyway, the forthcoming Spectra/Forte/XK (neé Koup) has been caught with only a little camo by the guys at Kia-World. And by the looks of things, it will be a Koupe-tacular little partner to the US-bound Soul hatch.
14 Comments on “Kia Koupe Spectracular...”
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Wow, I have to say that I’m not sure the Koup translated well into the production version above. The Koup had a nice sleek look to it. The example above looks like a turtle.
I’ll reserve judgement until I see how it looks in person.
Well from what I’ve seen the Forte sedan looks pretty sharp. Like a TSX before Acura lost their collective minds.
If this thing is priced right, the current Focus and Civic will look like insane buys.
Not worth setting foot in the greasiest-shyster-filled dealership in town.
They would have to have something really special for me to go through their buying experience.
It’s got one helluva blind spot.
Seth L, you can’t judge a whole brand based on one dealership. Every brand has a bad dealer. One of my favorite dealerships to buy from in the Detroit area sells Hyundai, Kia, Saab, and Subaru. They give you the advertised price as soon as you walk through the door. When my father was buying a minivan, we went to a couple local Dodge dealers, mentioned their adds, and they laughed. Even with the bad experience at those dealers, I still wouldn’t be put off by Chrysler. (Three power steering racks in 20K miles on the other hand…)
The photo looks like the Koupe could look good, or like a ridicules G6 GXP look a like.
John R :
I agree. I like the way the sedan looks and agree that they caught some of the nicer TSX cues. I’m hoping that this is a case where the camo is doing an extra good job of hiding the true appearance of the car.
Seth L :
I can’t really dispute that, at least when considering my local Kia dealer. I can only assume that like any car brand, they all have bad apples.
Wow, that rear 3/4 design reminds me of Alfa’s 75.
Even the Koup Concept looked a little weird from certain angles. In the good way, though. I’m excited about the two-liter turbo version of this.
Hope this thing is more crashworthy than a Hyundai Scoupe (circa 1990-ish) was. I almost bit on buying one of those…..until I saw the literally abominably horrifying front-end crash statistics on those death-traps.
I fondly hope the design engineers have learned a thing or nine about building crashworthiness into small coupes in the interving couple of decades….but that front structure looks a smidge flimsy to me…..
I’ll have to see more detail before I decide if it’s “aggressive” or “Sentra/Paseo love child”. The small-looking wheels suggest the latter.
Coupes? Is anyone buying coupes?
There are several Hyundai/Kia dealers in Central Ohio and from what I understand from others and my own buying experiences is that most (except Ricart) are pretty good here. Don’t judge a brand by its dealers.
Mark,
Hyundai has learned a lot about crash worthiness and engine design since then – once they had replaced most of the Mitsubishi drive trains back with their own stuff back in 99 is when they introduced the 10yr/100k mile warranty.
John Horner: I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve been seeing a spike in the numbers of Toyota Celicas (last generation) and Scion tC’s on the road. These FWD “sporty” coupes aren’t such a bad thing, light weight, decent fuel efficiency, etc. – should be a hit with commuters (daily drivers, sure) or college kids.
I saw the concept at the NY NAIAS and wasn’t impressed at the Civic clone. When the camo comes off, we’ll see.
We need more FWD sporty coupes. Life is too short to suffer, say, a Dodge Caliber.