This might surprise one or two of you: I’m not perfect. Which is why on a clear, sunny Saturday afternoon, I backed “my” long-term Kia Stinger GT into the neighbor’s Kia. Most accidents happen within 2 miles of home. In my case, 200 feet. Accidents happen, cars can be repaired, insurance exists for a reason, etc. More important to you, dear reader, is that the “incident” afforded me the chance to get into a different (though still red) Kia Stinger GT for a few weeks to compare and contrast it to our 20,000-plus-mile warhorse. Turned out, the crash was a good thing. No, really!
The single worst thing about our long-termer is the transmission lever. The car pops itself into neutral constantly. Pull the handle back toward drive too aggressively, and bam, you’re in neutral, not drive. Mind you, this is the optional, fancy shift-by-wire shifter. It drives me crazy in terms of annoyance, plus it’s dangerous. Imagine expecting the car to go and instead it just rolls forward slowly. Terrible at an intersection. It’s so bad that I called Kia. I was assured the bum shifter is because our car is an early build Stinger. To Kia’s point, the Stinger still has a decal from the launch of the car. This red GT is definitely one of the first cars to come off the line (“pre-pro” as such machines are called in the biz).
Now, if the transmission lever were a model-wide defect, then the short-term replacement car would suffer from the same ill, right? Wrong. The short-term Stinger GT had no such troubles. Moreover, I spent a bunch of time trying to reproduce the flaw (violently putting the car in gear, whacking it forward with the palm of my hand) from the other car, and I couldn’t.
In the third update, back when this Kia “belonged” to Alex Nishimoto, he complained of a rattle in the driver-side window. He took it in for service, and the tech “lubricated” the window seals. True story. Well, the problem still persists. I can report, however, that the replacement Stinger GT made no such noise. The nice PR person at Kia assured me that the rattle was due to our car being a pre-pro, and I am—sigh—once again choosing to believe the party line. And yes, I’m getting soft.
One more difference between the two cars: The crash victim is a RWD Stinger GT. The replacement car turned out to be AWD. This allows me to make a key observation after driving two vehicles essentially back to back for the same duty cycle: Unless you absolutely need all-wheel drive, buy the rear-driver. The biggest difference is that the steering feel is worlds better. But everything about the Stinger—its sportiness, the joy of just driving around—is better. More so than you might think.
Good thing I crashed her, eh?
Read more about our long-term 2018 Kia Stinger GT:
- Arrival
- Update 1: Testing the GT Part of the Name
- Update 2: Getting to Know the Active Safety Features
- Update 3: About That Badge
The post 2018 Kia Stinger GT Long-Term Update 4: Crashing for Science appeared first on Motortrend.
from Motortrend http://bit.ly/2ALL3L1
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