WOULD A CAR BY ANY NAME DRIVE AS WELL?

By Allan Smith - Friday, May 9, 2008

The Kia pro_cee’d, a sporty version of the popular Kia cee’d.

ON THE ROAD
THERE seems to be a competition going on among Far Eastern car makers to find the oddest name for their offerings.
Mazda had a pretty good tilt at the title with its Bongo and who could forget the Nissan Cedric? No doubt they have their fans but I just can’t take to such strange monickers. I mean, you knew where you were with a Morris Oxford.
Now, for the past 18 months or so, Kia has been intriguing us with its cee’d. Just where that comes from and what the apostrophe represents is beyond me — you know when you’ve been cee’d as one overtakes you, perhaps?
Now, to stir the mix up a bit more, comes the Kia pro_cee’d. I wait with some interest for the constabulary to aquire an unmarked version. The court statement should be worth hearing: “I was pro_cee’ding in a northerly direction ...”
And they might just do it, too, because proceed the pro_cee’d certainly does.
The car is the latest three door version of the model and shares only a couple of its body parts with the five-door original. The styling is sporting and muscular, with a sloping roof and smallish rear windows giving a rakish look, even if this does restrict rear vision slightly. Never mind, there’s a pair of ginormous door mirrors, which fold in at the touch of a button so you don’t take them off backing past the gateposts.
Leslie’s Kia, in Ventnor, which provided the test car, said the pro_cee’d’s (pardon the grammar) natural adversary is the Vauxhall Astra Sports Hatch, whose equivalent top-of-the-range model runs out at about five grand more, so the Korean newcomer does look outstanding value.
I tried the all-singing, all-dancing 2.0 CRDi Sport, which is £15,500 on the road and anyone who claims to need more kit than this had has serious gadget issues.
From cruise control to dial-your-favourite-temperature climate control, it’s all there.
As we’ve come to expect these days, there are all manner of computer-aided safety features, such as electronic stability programme, traction control and emergency brake assist to help you keep out of trouble, plus more airbags than you can shake a stick at if you don’t anticipate the accident and need to be cocooned until it’s over.
But the pro_cee’d is one of the most solid-feeling cars I’ve ever driven and inspires confidence at every level. Kia is certainly putting its money where its mouth is with a seven-year, 100,000-mile warranty.
This is a car with real presence on the road, yet remains wieldy around the IW’s country lanes.
The diesel engine in the 2.0 Sport has wonderful low and mid-range pulling power, making progress fast and smooth and overtaking safe.
And, as is the way with these engines, frugality is assured, unless you are particularly coarse with your right foot. Official government figures show 50 mpg on the combined cycle, which is good by any measure and remarkable considering the performance.
Power gets to the road through a six-speed gearbox, which is light and very positive and makes best use of the engine’s flexibility, while sixth helps to achieve that superb economy.
Inside, the car is a quiet, comfortable world of leather and a good driving position is not hard to find.
The instruments light up in orange and my passenger and I had the amusing experience of driving along one night bathed in the orange glow, which must have looked to bystanders as if we had overdosed on bottled suntan. The effect can, apparently, be turned down or even partly turned off. Should have read the handbook.
The Kia pro_cee’d is a car which would be hard to fault against most opposition.
And I’d probably come to terms with the name eventually. After all, the Kia Oxford was never going to work.

WOULD A CAR BY ANY NAME DRIVE AS WELL?

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