4-26-16 8:16 AM PDT

2016 Kia K900 drive review: Great expectations

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2016 Kia K900 drive review: Great expectations

APRIL 26, 2016

1 OF 11The Kia K900 is meant to do battle with the full-size luxury sedans of the world, and on paper, it does.

PHOTO BY KIA

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WHAT'S KIA DOING IN THE $70,000 PREMIUM SEDAN MARKET?

Driving around in the Kia K900, I was thinking, "If this thing comes in at less than $80K, it’s a good deal.

"Holy mackerel! -- look at that sticker! $68K!"

What do you get for that low, low price? Lots of power, effortless steering, a soft ride and a huge well-built interior.

The K900 is sort of old school in the sense that luxury and sport weren’t always seen on the same car. Kozak puts it nicely, “You helmed your big, comfortable family sedan during the week and zipped around in your dorky, underpowered but sporty MG on the weekends.”

Again, that’s not really a complaint, or at least not a big one as far as I’m concerned. The car has every kind of luxury feature as its competitors: LED headlights, nappa leather, gonzo stereo. It’s actually quite quick from a standstill, and out on the freeway it’s dead quiet, wafting along like an Olds 88. Sport mode makes the steering a little more responsive, quickens the shifts and improves throttle response. Still, in any mode, it’s old-school floaty. It’s one of the more relaxing cars I can recall. Personally I’d like things a bit tighter …

The big question is, are people willing to pay $66,400 for a Kia? Do upper-stratosphere buyers care about the badge? I think they do. This is a big, handsome, powerful, coddling car. Fit and finish is damned close to the Germans and Lexus, and it’s comfortable as all get out.

Do people care? Do K900s give the Germans heartburn? Or are we looking at a Korean Phaeton? The marketplace decides such things of course, though if Kia really wants to swim with the big fish it maybe should tighten up the ride -- at least a little. That’s what I’d do if I ran the joint.

-- Editor Wes Raynal

Our Kia K900 came with the VIP package, including a surround-view monitor, Advanced Smart Cruise Control (ASCC), 12.3-inch Supervision Thin Film Transistor (TFT) LCD and a head-up display.

OTHER VOICES:

Well, I’ll give the K900 this: It makes me think. Namely about what, exactly this car is supposed to be.

It’s not Kia’s attempt to move the marque upmarket, even if it does reflect a brand-wide push toward more upscale materials. It probably doesn’t preview a spin-off luxury brand, since that would interfere with Hyundai’s parthenogenetic Genesis effort.

Think of it as a fresh Korean take on a Bangle-era 7-Series, but with less offensive styling -- OK, with practically invisible styling -- and an infotainment stack that doesn’t make you want to drive the car off a cliff (sorry, iDrive fans, all four of you). It has nearly everything someone shopping for a big, cushy luxury sedan in 2006 could have ever imagined, topped off with a slate of modern, high-tech driving aids. What it doesn’t really have is a well-defined place in the market, or even a well-defined reason for existing.

There are a couple of driving modes to choose from, but they’re all pretty sedate. Sport, so far as I can tell, just changes shift points and makes the steering wheel feel more nervous.

Power from the optional V8 is more than adequate, if not always handled with grace: A tight enough turn on cold pavement will send traction control into overdrive, killing power before allowing the stern of this big ol’ boat to come around. Which would have been fun, but this clearly isn’t supposed to be a driver’s car.

One way that I can kind of rationalize this whole experiment is that, by reaching for the stars with a flagship sedan, Kia figures it can drag the rest of its lineup upward both in the public’s eyes and in terms of actual quality improvements. If that’s the case, I’d say it has paid off: Kia is hardly perceived as a low-budget joke anymore, and just about everything north of the Forte is unexpectedly nice inside and out these days. Check out a Cadenza or a Sorento -- I think you’ll be surprised.

Beyond that, I’m baffled. Unlike Wes, the nearly $70,000 sticker leaves me slack-jawed, not running to the nearest Kia dealership with checkbook in hand. I mean … objectively, you’re getting a lot for your money here, but nobody believes luxury cars are purely about value-for-money, right? If that were the case, Cadillac would be having no trouble moving its sedans; as it stands, Kia isn’t going to be selling a lot of these.

But as I said, maybe that’s not the whole point of the K900.

-- Graham Kozak, associate editor

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Walt Disney coined the poignant "do what you do and do it well." Paraphrased, it can be taken to mean find your niche in the world and be the best you can possibly be rather than distracting yourself with grandiose and unrealistic goals.

Those sage words don't stop brands from trying, of course, which is how I found myself behind the wheel of a Kia K900 stickering for $68,895.

Let's parse this out: $70,000 luxury car? Sure, why not. Luxurious Kia? No issue there -- you can get heated rear seats on a Forte. $70,000 Kia? Aha -- that's the disconnect right there.

I learned the hard way with my Optima review that Kia's top U.S. brass have both an inflated sense of brand cachet and easily bruised egos, so I won't bother to mince words: The K900 is simply too expensive to wear a Kia badge.

Though it won't be perceived as such, I mean no disrespect. Kia makes remarkably good mass-market cars, and the brand has made unbelievable strides after peddling shitboxes for its first 10 years of existence here. That it suddenly feels the need to foist a $70,000 luxury car on an oversaturated market shows remarkable tone-deafness on the part of Korean bosses and the inability to learn from its predecesssors' mistakes (see Phaeton, Volkswagen). As was the Phaeton, the K900 is a nice car, to the point of doing a convincing 550i impression when the road is straight and smooth and you dive into the 5-liter V8.

Remarkable ride isolation and an ultra-quiet interior begin to fool you into thinking, "Hey, maybe they're on to something here." Start asking for sporty handling, though, and things fall apart in a hurry. The K900 gets twitchy at freeway speeds, the steering is nonlinear and there's a ton of brake dive. Still, I'm just a car reviewer, right? And one who's made it clear he's not in Kia's good graces after inadequately fellating the brand's best-seller. I could be both wrong and biased.

Could be, but I'm not: After January 2016 sales totaling 68 units, barely edging out the Cadillac ELR (a nameplate GM has already said will be euthanized when its current product cycle ends), the market is sending Kia a clear message about where the brand belongs -- and where it doesn't.

-- Digital Editor Andy Stoy

The Kia K900 is meant to do battle with the full-size luxury sedans of the world, and on paper, it does.PHOTO BY KIA

Sportiness is not inherently luxurious. Let's dispense with that idea right away. The K900 doesn't need to set 'Ring records to be a good luxury car. In fact, the kinds of things that might make it feel more sporty -- tighter steering and suspension, more aggressive transmission programming -- would, to the segment of the luxury market that made Lexus the second-biggest seller of luxury cars in 2015, make the K900 seem less comfortable, less luxurious. You don't buy a Lexus because you want to pretend you're a race driver. You buy it because it's comfortable and you can be reasonably sure it won't break in exotic, expensive ways.

This is exactly the value proposition that the K900 makes. And while this is a lot to spend on a Kia, find me a comparably equipped car from another manufacturer with similar equipment.

That's not to say that cachet brands like Mercedes-Benz have much to fear from the Kia or Hyundai -- I doubt many people arrive at a Mercedes dealership because they spent hours researching the cost of options across a set of manufacturers.

But there is a part of the market that is currently occupied by Lexus, Acura, Lincoln and Cadillac that could easily make room for a well-built, well-designed luxury car that offers a lot of equipment for the money. I don't remember it personally, but I'm told a lot of people sniffed at the idea of a Japanese luxury car at one point. Today a Lexus LS 460 starts at $72,520, and in a lot of ways, it's not quite as nice as the K900 we just had in the fleet.

Kia's luxury offerings may end up being rolled into the Genesis brand, and that's probably a better place for them. But the idea that Hyundai/Kia can't or shouldn't build cars like the K900 is weird. If Kia sells a handful of them, and the brass thinks that the cost of having a slow-seller on dealer lots is outweighed by the good it does for the Kia brand, that's fine. If it's ultimately a failed experiment, that's fine too. I'm not a Hyundai shareholder. And regardless, Kia's not selling fewer Souls because they offer the K900 and the K900 won't be the difference between profit and loss this year.

Some of the coolest, most interesting cars ever built were sales flops. That's the way it goes. I loved the VW Phaeton and so did most of the people who set aside their brand-snob impulses and bought one. But, if VW had been able to see into the future, the Phaeton might never have existed. It's hard to say whether VW would be better or worse off for having not made that car, but as a car guy I'm glad I got to see it.

-- Rory Carroll, content director

The Kia K900 is meant to do battle with the full-size luxury sedans of the world, and on paper, it does.PHOTO BY KIA

Options: VIP plus package including head-up display, autonomous emergency braking, advanced smart cruise control, quilted Nappa leather seat trim, driver’s seat power cushion extension, front seat power headrests, front passenger seat power lumbar support, power reclining rear seats, ventilated rear outboard seats, lateral adjusting rear headrests, rear seat power lumbar support, premium headliner trim and power door latches ($6,000)

WES RAYNAL - Wes Raynal joined Crain Communications’ circulation department while still in college. When he graduated in 1986, he became a reporter for Autoweek sister publication Automotive News. He has worked as Autoweek’s associate editor, news editor, motorsports editor and executive editor before being named editor in 2009. READ MORE »
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