TheWild ™ Posted June 14, 2018 Posted June 14, 2018 Why we're running it: To get fully familiar with the dynamic successes and foibles of an alluring driver’s car. And to see if the UK public can ‘get’ the idea of a truly desirable Kia Life with a Kia Stinger GT S: Month 2 There's no escaping the appeal of the V6 engine - 23rd May 2018 Having had a go in the cooking petrol and diesel versions of the Stinger in recent weeks, it was great to finally get back behind the wheel of our GT S long-termer. While those more sensible models maintain the rear-driven handling balance and stylish looks of their V6-engined range-mate, without that 365bhp powerplant under their bonnets they feel a bit, well, pedestrian. Mileage: 5505 Back to the top If you don’t want to know the score, look away now: Kia Stinger nil, pothole two - 9th May 2018 How many British drivers have found out how costly and inconvenient a meeting of 19in alloy wheel and ominously deep pothole can be over the past six weeks? It must be in the thousands – and two Autocar road testers are certainly among their number. It was one particular pothole found by m’colleague Matt Prior late at night on his way home from the airport that befell the nearside of our long-term Kia Stinger GT S recently. The pothole had been cut out for repair but left unfinished – and, Matt reported, made him very glad he hadn’t taken the motorbike to Heathrow on that occasion. The meeting burst the car’s front nearside tyre, and so Matt spent a goodly chunk of Easter holiday time that should have been dedicated to chocolate egg consumption sourcing a particularly elusive Continental ContiSportContact 5 tyre on a bank holiday weekend. Bless him, he succeeded, though, and returned the car to the office the following Tuesday sorted. Or so he thought. A few days later, however, yours truly stopped to buy fuel on a Friday night commute home to find a bubble blister the size of a tennis ball in the sidewall of the Stinger’s nearside rear tyre, having already been somewhat perturbed by a slight but detectable wobble emanating from the car’s front axle under braking. All was clearly not well. So I sourced the car’s second replacement tyre in a week and booked in to my nearest fitter, which was inundated with demand already from people, many of whom had probably been similarly unlucky with potholes, and so couldn’t squeeze the car in for three days. When the fitting was finally done, having taken the opportunity to have both nearside wheels rebalanced, I discovered the source of the wobble on that front axle: a front rim sufficiently altered by its run-in with a Northamptonshire crater that it needed 125g of balance ballast strategically sticking to it – and it still doesn’t feel quite right on the car, even after that. Good news? There’s no warped disc, as I suspected there might be when last I wrote. The nice bloke at the fitters even let me check that much for myself. Either way, the inevitable main dealer service appointment will now have to made, I fear – and I worry it’ll be expensive; because Kia’s seven-year warranty might be good, but I doubt it extends to cover the fallout of shoddy road repairs. Replacement 19in rims can’t be cheap, can they? And I’m also told (by the same nice chap at the fitters, since you ask) that I should get the tracking checked by Kia while I’m at it. “Don’t leave it too long,” he said. “Bad tracking gets set in its ways and becomes harder to fix with use. It’s a bit like breaking in a new shoe with the tongue out of place. After that, you know that tongue will never sit straight on the bridge of your foot, where it should, no matter how many times you adjust it.” Somebody give that man a TV show on Discovery. In better news, I’ve come across the function, buried a couple of menus inside the trip computer, to deactivate the dreaded ‘welcome chimes’ the car plays as you enter and exit. They make it sound like a 10-year-old Windows laptop computer. Although they’re minutely different ditties, they’re about as ‘welcome’ – by the time your 99th rendition comes around, at any rate – as a jab in the ear with a cotton wool bud. Suffice it to say I’ve disabled them for the foreseeable – or at least until just before the next time I see fit to lend the car to Mr Prior for an airport run. Love it: BRIGHT PAINTWORK The recent sunshine really makes the paintwork zing. I’m currently too afraid to look directly at it for fear of retina damage. But in a good way. Loathe it: LIMITED SET-UP CHOICES No ‘custom’ driving mode. Sorry, Kia: ‘smart’ isn’t the same thing if you want to pick steering, damping and powertrain maps à la carte.
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