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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the car that goes around left-hand corners differently from the way it negotiates right-hand corners...
Yes, aim the Kia Rio at a right-hander and you'll find that the cheap Korean corners with typical small front-wheel drive understeer, the Kumho Powerstar tyres squealing in protest. Lift off sharply and the tail moves out a little. Not awe-inspiring, but safe and competent for this class. But come to a left-hander and you're in for a surprise. Enter quickly and you'll find the inside front left wheel unweighted - and then it all begins!
The wheel slips then grips, each slip accompanied by a pitching corkscrew motion. It's as if the driver is bouncing his foot up and down on the throttle, because each time the inner wheel loses grip, all acceleration is lost. The right-hand wheel as a driving source? Apparently not. In lower speed corners this results in lurching, squealing progress.
But it is at higher speeds where the characteristic changes from being mildly amusing to being quite unnerving. At 100 km/h around a long bumpy left-hander (only left hand corners, remember) the unstable, diagonally-pitching motion is distinctly unsettling - bad enough to be noticeable to passengers and serious enough to raise the hairs on the back of the driver's neck.
No, you probably won't find these odd characteristics on a test drive around the block. And gentle drivers may never find them, even over the life of the car. But with suspension this strange in extremis, it sure makes you wonder about the engineering development of the rest of the car....
So what does the suspension of this roomy five-door hatch comprise? At the front, generic MacPherson struts are used with long tension rods and a thin anti-roll bar. But it's at the back where the spec goes downmarket. An torsion beam rear axle is suspended from two longitudinal links and a transverse Panhard rod. While the press release sates that this is an independent system, certainly any 'independence' is severely compromised by the design. Variable rate springs are used front and rear. The sizeable unsprung rear weight can be felt in a dull thump that intrudes as the rear wheels fall into potholes; in addition, it is not hard to bottom-out the rear suspension over speed humps. Anti-dive and anti-squat design elements appear to be conspicuously lacking - the Rio's bum descends under acceleration (even in the upper gears) while, with the injudicious use of the centre pedal, the nose can be made to bob up and down like a nodding dog.
A competent suspension system it isn't. As a comparative example, the base model Ford Laser that we recently sampled had a suspension brilliance a very long way ahead of the Rio. However, in non-demanding driving, the Rio steers and corners in a benign manner - though what happens if you have to brake and swerve when you're negotiating a left-hand corner we were never brave enough to find out....
The squat under power results in very noticeable wet weather wheelspin - the 1.5-litre MI-Tech iron-block engine is surprisingly punchy. With 80.5kW at 6000 rpm and 140Nm at 4000, the DOHC, 16-valve, direct-fire ignition and knock-sensed engine is tractable and gives the Rio good performance for this class of car. One reason for this is the car's low mass - 960kg (or is it 1030kg...? both are quoted in Kia literature). The factory time to 100 km/h is 11.3 seconds; we recorded similar performance. (Note that the auto is m-u-c-h slower - 13.7 seconds to 100!) NVH from the engine is excessive at high rpm, and the transverse four is never smooth and quiet at any rpm.
High-speed cruising stability is good, and with the claimed top speed a high 185 km/h, the slippery drag co-efficient spec of 0.30 must be near the money. However, there is a downside to country cruising - above 80 km/h the wipers slow noticeably. With a Highway Cycle of 6.05 l/100km you won't have to stop too often for fuel - but you'll be at the bowser more frequently around town, with the City cycle a not-so-good 9.4. Note again that performance is severely compromised if you select the electronically controlled auto trans - City cycle consumption rockets to an abysmal 11.4 l/100km.
While the engine is responsive and the car's footprint small, the Kia has some negative city traits. The gearbox is notchy - selecting first sometimes requires a real shove - and the visibility past the C and A pillars is poor. However, offsetting this is the large and usable interior that benefits from the relatively long 2410mm wheelbase. Rear foot- and head-room are both good, although knee room is tight. In the front seats, you find yourself sitting a long way from the doors - the seats are closer to the centreline of the car than the sides. This isn't a huge problem, but it means that the driver and passenger tend to brush elbows while the door armrests are too distant for comfort. The boot is huge, being practical in shape and also containing a 12V power outlet. In fact, the cabin is well-appointed for a budget car, with deeply moulded door trims and a coarse weave cloth used on many surfaces - it doesn't feel bare-bones at all. The grippy airbag steering wheel is connected to power steering (3.26 turns lock to lock) that provides good turn-in and respectable feedback; the torque steer that is sometimes present doesn't intrude unduly if you learn to not actively correct for it. If you do, the progress can become a series of small swerves....
In fact the Rio is very well equipped for its $14,990 price - it has as standard a driver's airbag (no passenger bag is available, even as an option), key-operated central locking, complex but effective 6-speaker CD radio, and air con. Oh yes, and you get air-filled bumpers. What? Apparently the Rio uses bumpers that contain a bladder inflated with air. In low speed accidents these are said to absorb the energy through compression, while in high speed accidents they burst on impact. Perhaps after failing to negotiate left-hand corners? Another apparent safety feature is the 4.5mm thick polythene fuel tank, which is said to deform on impact, rather than breaching like a steel tank.
The Rio is a cheap hatch, so a rattle in the dash of the test car, loud engine, flimsy ashtray, vents that can't be switched off individually, seats that lack lumbar support and which are slightly too firm - all these are to an extent expected. And prospective buyers can point to the decent sound system, air, central locking, airbag, and practical interior as major offsets to these negatives.
But the suspension behaviour when the car is driven hard was enough to well and truly put us off; perhaps there are no more gremlins hiding in the underpinnings, but who wants to find out the hard way? The ones that we found were bad enough.....
Footnote: After we'd driven the Reo for a short time, we checked the tyre pressures and 'bounce' tested the dampers. They appeared fine.
www.kia.com.au
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