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Bruce Newton19 Jun 2017
REVIEW

Kia Stinger GT 2017 Review

Kia’s Stinger GT tackles the Green Hell and shows its one hell of car
Model Tested
Kia Stinger GT
Review Type
International Launch
Review Location
Nurburgring, Germany

As we enter the ends of days for the Aussie car industry things are getting surreal. We are pinning our hopes for an affordable sports sedan future on a Kia. Yes, a Kia! It’s called the Stinger GT and with its combination of a 272kW twin-turbo V6 engine, rear-wheel drive and affordable pricing around $50K it looks promising. Can it possibly deliver? We went to the Nurburgring to find out.

There’s a lot of things you can’t learn about a new car from just one lap of a racetrack, even if it is the legendary Nurburgring.

But here’s one thing one circuit of the 20.8km ‘Green Hell’ in the Kia Stinger GT absolutely tells us. There is no other Kia like it.

Just the thought of trying to drive an Optima GT, for instance, on this track at these speeds prompts a shudder. But the 3.3-litre V6 twin-turbo Stinger GT, the much vaunted, much anticipated affordable rear-wheel drive sports sedan (well hatch, actually), not only survived the lap but was enjoyable doing it.

Okay, this wasn’t a 10-10ths lap. But still, chasing Ring-meister Dirk Schoysman (18,000 laps and counting) as he pressed on at speeds high enough to produce full-blooded four-wheel slides and air between rubber and the road was enough to deliver the message.

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Ring Mastered
We were at the Nurburgring because the Stinger GT’s test and development program has included many laps of the old circuit. And it showed in the way it coped with the rises and falls, the closing and opening radii corners, the off cambers and high speed commitments.

It did enough to suggest, for those of us despairing the departure of the locally-developed Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore, that just maybe, just maybe, we will still have an affordable sporty drive to which we can feasibly aspire.

But here’s the rub, the all-wheel-drive version of the Stinger GT isn’t coming to Australia and it may be an even better drive. We got one lap in that too and it felt fractionally more stable and predictable than the rear-wheel drive.

But it’s impossible to be sure about such things via such a brief taste. It would have been wonderful to do a few more laps but the schedule did not allow. And, as these were pre-production Stingers, there was no chance to drive them on the open road.

You will have to wait until the local launch of the Stinger in late August (ahead of an expected September 1 on-sale date) to get a proper assessment of the six-model Stinger range.

Solid building blocks
What the Nurburgring experience does tell us is the Stinger’s building blocks, which start with an architecture shared with Hyundai’s luxury brand Genesis, are high-quality. There are issues, but none are deal breakers.

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The ‘Lambda II’ V6 twin-turbo engine is strong without feeling in any sense overwhelming. If it truly can achieve the claimed 4.9sec 0-100km/h time then it’s burlier than it sounds, which is pretty vacuous thanks to the synthesised audio piped through the speakers. Thankfully, having recognised the issue, Kia Australia is having its own optional bi-modal exhaust developed.

The Hyundai/Kia conglomerate’s own eight-speed transmission is a smooth shifter in auto or manual mode, but it will still change up on the 6500rpm redline when being operated via the steering wheel-mounted flappy paddles (you can’t shift manually via the gear lever). That shouldn’t be the case in a sports sedan.

Then again, Kia insists this car is what it says on the box, a GT -- grand tourer… A car capable of swiftly covering the ground in an enjoyable and communicative manner without resorting to harshness...

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The chassis set-up reflects that. The GT’s driver-adjustable dampers can be cycled through comfort and sport modes. The former felt lacking in body control for such extreme activities as the Nurburgring, even though Kia experts recommended that’s what we use.

Switching to the superior body control offered by sport in the AWD could explain at least partly why it felt that bit more cohesive.

Rolling on 19-inch ContiSport Contacts, both versions of the car had excellent traction out of corners even with the throttle flat to the floor. Well-tuned stability control plays role in that.

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The Stinger also turned in determinedly, resisting understeer, perhaps slightly moreso in the rear-driver than the AWD. The electric-assist power steering was accurate and responsive to big inputs, but I’ll leave assessment of the detailed nuances of the tiller to the road drive.

Of course, it should also be noted that Stinger will get a unique Australian-developed suspension and steering tune, which the locals insist is a step beyond the Euro-spec cars we drove.

The weakest aspect of the GT turned out to be brakes. That’s perhaps unsurprising given the constant pounding they were getting through a long day of constant lapping.

The GT comes with Brembo four-pot calipers and 350mm discs up-front and by the time our lap came in the rear-driver, it had a long pedal and warped rotors.

The AWD was better; the pedal was still a bit long but braking progression was good.

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A winner for Kia
Neither Stinger GT we drove did that ‘shrink-wrap’ thing truly great sports drives deliver. Cars like the Holden Commodore SS-V Redline feel smaller than they are, as they get hustled along. In those special moments, the whole thing distils down to you, the steering wheel and your bum in the seat. The Kia is a step below that truly intimate level of connection – or at least in this environment it was.

It’s still a commendable effort considering, however, considering this is a big car that is 4830mm long with a 2905mm wheelbase. Official weights haven’t been announced, but Kia’s tech people reckon the GT will approach 1750kg.

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That’s a plenty to muscle around, albeit still smaller and lighter than an SS-V Redline. Which is the better car? Well, I lean to the Holden in part because it’s a V8. But only a comparison drive will give us a definitive answer.

The other question might be whether the SS-V is the right opponent? Maybe the Calais-V makes more sense given the GT’s character. Either way it’s a win for the Kia just to be considered in this company. And consider the fact that the Commodore as we know it ceases to exist come 2018.

A step up
Beyond the driving, the Stinger GT is an undoubted step-up in presentation and quality from Kia.

The exterior styling is very much personal choice, but at the least it’s original and imposing. The overall cab-back body proportions are fine, but some of the details seems forced and cluttered. It’s a bit fussy around the front, there’s a somewhat contrived meeting of lines around the C-pillar and its finished off by four exhaust outlets and a diffuser.

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Befitting a car with sporting intentions, you sit deep within the cockpit and nestle into well bolstered sports seats. In an era of digitally reinterpreted screens with multitudes of adjustment, the Stinger offers a traditional look with two main analogue dials in the instrument panel.

Three vents across the centre of the dashboard and the speakers in the door cards evoke Mercedes-Benz – appropriate considering this car was designed in Germany at Kia’s Frankfurt tech centre.

There’s an eight-inch touch screen, a flat-bottomed steering wheel and a decent amount of storage up-front.

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In the back, there’s good knee and foot room for an adult, but headroom is compromised by the coupe-esque sweep of the roofline into the hatch if you’re 180cm or taller. It may be better in a car without a sunroof.

Lift the tailgate and you’ll find a long, low luggage area offering 406 litres of stowage. That expands dramatically when the rear seat is split folded, but a figure hasn’t been released. As far as unanswered Stinger questions go, that’s one of the less pressing ones.

Can it fill the gap
The biggest question is, can Stinger fill the gap the demise of local rear-drive sedans creates?

One lap of the Nurburgring suggests the GT’s got what it takes to appeal to lovers of the traditional Aussie sports sedan culture. But it will take whole lot more kilometres of driving on local roads for us to be sure.

For now, we can say this: it’s the best ever Kia to drive… And by a huge margin.

Kia Stinger GT pricing and specifications:
Price: $53,000 est (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 3.3-litre V6 turbo-petrol
Outputs: 272kW/510Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel: TBA
CO2: TBA
Safety Rating: TBA

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Our team of independent expert car reviewers and journalistsMeet the team
Expert rating
82/100
Engine, Drivetrain & Chassis
16/20
Price, Packaging & Practicality
17/20
Safety & Technology
16/20
Behind The Wheel
16/20
X-Factor
17/20
Pros
  • Willing drivetrain
  • Confident handling, lots of grip
  • Far and away the best driving Kia
Cons
  • Needs a soundtrack
  • Manual mode not truly manual
  • We may not be getting the best variant
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