From The Sunday Times Online (UK)
March 9, 2003
Kia Sorento
Think of the dead parrot sketch, with four-wheel drive
by Jeremy Clarkson
"When I was eight I distinctly remember my father dragging me out of bed one Sunday night and telling me to watch a new show he’d found on television. It was called Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
I was tired. I had school the next day. And while there were plenty of sheep falling out of trees, there were no elephants standing on their hind legs and no clowns. But Dad wouldn’t listen to my protestations. “Son,” he said in a frowning, fatherly way, “you need to watch this. It’s going to be important.”
It turned out he was right. Ten years later I was faced with some enormous examination that would attempt to probe my knowledge of Shakespeare’s sonnets. An hour had been set aside but 10 seconds would have been enough because I knew nothing (except that they hadn’t been written by Brian Voles).
And then I thought: “Hang on a minute, I know every single Monty Python song, film, television show and book off by heart. So if I can recite, verbatim, the entire Travel Agent sketch, I can learn this old tosh.” It worked. I passed.
Monty Python was my life. My Big Red Book was signed by all the cast, the Holy Grail made me physically sick with laughter, and when people attempted to quote from the Four Yorkshiremen I would grow visibly angry when they got bits of it even slightly wrong. “No, no, no. It’s not a shoebox in middle of t’ road. In Yorkshire, you don’t pronounce a ‘the’ as a ‘t’. The whole word is substituted for a barely noticeable flick of the head. It’s why people in Leeds could never catch the The in action. They’d ring the box office and ask for tickets to see.”
So what’s funny now? Well, over lunch at Wimbledon last summer I sat between Ricky Gervais and Rob Brydon, and that was. It was verbal tennis, with moves that left the table breathless. Gervais served, Brydon sent a backhand reply down the line, Gervais scooped it up, added some Welsh abuse and sent it cross court for a winner. But the next point was won by Brydon with a devastating smash on the subject of fatness.
Strangely, however, their television programmes never raise a smile. Oh sure, I watched every episode of The Office and have the T-shirt, but it never finished with me on the floor, begging for oxygen. And as for Marion and Geoff, that’s some of the most keenly observed drama ever to worm its way into your sitting room but it isn’t even on nodding terms with comedy.
You’ve Been Framed is funnier. Especially when the host’s new boyfriend went back to his wife. I nearly laughed at that.
Maybe it’s a by-product of getting old. When I was six poo was hilarious. When I was 12 I’d howl at the Irishman on a plane with one parachute, and when I was 14 the St John Ambulance had to carry me out of Sheffield City Hall to escape from Jasper Carrott’s mole story.
But today everything’s different. I marvel at the quick-wittedness of Paul Merton on Just a Minute. I stand in silent wonder every morning at the genius of Matt. I have enormous respect for Jonathan Ross and Steve Coogan. I devour Viz and I’ve never once considered cancelling my subscription to Private Eye. But I don’t actually laugh at anything. I simply recognise that something is funny, wish that I’d thought of it and move on.
I don’t even laugh at Python material any more. But it still stands proud, because unlike any other comedy, it left an indelible mark on everything it touched. Freemasons. The Spanish Inquisition. John Stuart Mill. All were turned into jokes by Cleese, Palin et al.
They did the same thing to places as well. Bideford, for instance, is always somewhere you hike for. And, of course, you don’t want to come back from Sorrento to a dead cat.
Imagine my surprise then when I was presented last week with a car called the Sorento. I didn’t laugh, obviously, but I did say to myself: “That’s funny. It’s like calling a car the Slough. Or the Royston Vasey.”
The car in question is yet another dreary 4x4 from some godforsaken industrial conglomerate in the Far East. This one’s a Kia and in exchange for £18,000 you get nothing worth writing home about.
Let’s start by gently mauling the Sorento's 2.5 litre diesel engine. It will give you 33mpg, which isn’t bad, but the downside is that to cover 33 miles you need to set aside a fortnight. This is not slow, like a Citroën 2CV or a dustbin lorry; sometimes there’s so little power you don’t move at all.
No, really. At one point I made an uphill left turn in second gear and even with my foot mashed into the bri-nylon carpet, I ground to a noisy standstill.
I had a sense that the throttle wasn’t connected to the engine in the usual way. It felt more like the telegraph system on a ship. Putting my foot down sent a “full ahead” signal to some oily boilerman under the bonnet who put down his copy of the Sport and reluctantly shovelled some more coal on the fire.
This means you have plenty of time to admire the interior, which is a symphony of video rental box plastic with the sort of cloth normally used to make dogtooth suits for old ladies in Eastbourne. I was going to talk about the giant gear knob, too. But it fell off.
Then there was the traction. The Sorento wades into battle with big fat tyres, enough space under the prop shaft to shelter from the rain and switchable four-wheel drive. Kia itself calls it a capable and rugged workhorse. But it’s no such thing. It got completely stuck in a puddle of mud through which my four-year-old daughter had walked only moments beforehand. And she normally falls over in a light breeze.
It gets worse, because Kia says the Sorento is also aimed at the style-conscious buyer who wants presence on the road. And yet this is the very same company that urges us all to think before we drive.
It points out that a billion car journeys each year are less than a mile and even gives away a free bicycle with one of its spoon-bendingly boring saloons. So if it’s so anti-car, what in the name of all that’s holy is it doing making a dirty great off-roader? This hypocrisy isn’t my main problem with the Sorento, though. And nor is it the woeful engine or the Bambi traction. I don’t even care that it’s no more spacious inside than a normal hatchback. No, what I object to — violently — is the treacly nothingness of it all.
This car wasn’t designed to be the best 4x4 in the world or the easiest to drive, or even the most comfortable. It’s automotive KFC, a light bulb with reclining seats, a consumer good with the personality of a caravan site and the desirability of herpes.
You sense this with every Kia, and Hyundai and Proton and Perodua. They’re nothing more than reasonably well-made tools for African taxi drivers and government officials in Burma. They’re white goods that happen to be blue and red as well. So quite why we in Europe might want one I have absolutely no idea.
Value for money? Oh puh-lease. The Jeep Cherokee, the Honda CR-V, the Land Rover Freelander, the Toyota RAV4, the Mitsubishi Shogun Pinin and the excellent Nissan X-Trail all cost the same or less than the tedious Sorento.
Pathetically, Kia defends the price by saying you get a free three-year roadside assistance package which even covers you if you go to the Continent, though taking your Kia on holiday is a bit like taking your ironing board. I’d rather take the free bicycle.
Cars may be tools in the emerging markets, like Vietnam, Rwanda and America. But Europe emerged from its shell a thousand years ago so here cars are much more than mere machines. They’re engineering with a purpose, social pointers, private booths in a bustly world, and they are sculpture. But unlike any Henry Moore, their power can marshal your internal organs in a small, tingly puddle at the base of your spine. They’re Helmet Heads with added G-force.
Like television, they expand your horizons, they excite you, they amuse you, they frighten you. I’m told, though I’ve never experienced it myself, they can even arouse you.
Look at it this way. Over a period of 20 years Monty Python poked fun at philosophy, literature, class, stupidity and even Christianity. But apart from a Welshman who wanted to swap a mint condition 1927 Rolls-Royce for one exactly the same — which was more an attack on the Boyos — cars were never mentioned. Some cows are just too sacred."
VITAL STATISTICS
Model Kia Sorento 2.5 CRDi XE
Engine type four cylinder turbodiesel, 2497cc
Power 138bhp @ 3800rpm
Torque 232 lb ft @ 1850rpm
Transmission four-speed automatic
Suspension (front) double wishbone, coil springs, anti-roll bar; (rear) five-link live rear axle, coil springs and self-levelling
Tyres 245/70 R16
Dimensions 4567mm length; 1884mm width; 1804mm height
Fuel 33.2mpg (combined)
C02 226g/km
Acceleration 0 to 62mph: 14.6sec
Top speed 106mph
Insurance Group 12
Price £17,995
Verdict Woeful (1/5 star)
END OF ARTICLE.
MY HUMBLE OPINION: Kia Sorento was on sale in Malaysia since late 2003 as CBU from Korea. It was priced at RM157,000 back then. In 2005 (2 yrs later), it was Assembled in Malaysia and renamed "Naza Sorento". The price had since dropped to RM138,000. Those who bought the "Kia" before it's known as "Naza" were not amused. Why?
1) They paid RM19,000 more, 2) Resale value badly hit.
Let's talk more about #2. The resale value of "Naza" Sorento's suffered as a result of the Rebadging. It only retained 45% of its value in 3 years. As a comparison, both Honda CRV and Ssangyong Rexton both retained 63% of its value in the same period.
Kia Claimed that Germans tuned their Sorento’s ride and handling. Did I hear Porsche? Am afraid yes. If it’s really“tuned” by Porsche, then why NOT a Single EUROPEAN Car journalist mention about it?
Would I recommend this SUV to you? Am afraid NO… For the money, you are better off with a NEW Nissan X-trail 2.5 CVTC which is A LOT More fun to drive or a nearly new 2005 Ssangyong Rexton which has proven and more powerful Mercedes E-class 2.7 CDI engine, it also happened to be a TRUE 7 seater. Both have DECENT 4x4 capability, WAY BETTER Resale value (65% retained value in 3 yrs for X-trail and only 2% less for a Rexton against 45% retained value for Sorento) AND MORE Rewarding to Own and drive. Dunno about you, but if I were you, I'll AVOID KIA cars (for the time being) unless there's improvements on their Future products... Hey, the NEW KIA RIO sounds promising, well I'll wait and see when it reached Malaysia...
No comments:
Post a Comment