Aspen, Co. – If you want the Brooks Brothers of personal transportation – we’re talking midsize sedans here – the lineup of usual suspects is as familiar as it is excellent.
Honda Accord, Ford Fusion, Toyota Camry, Chevrolet Malibu, Volkswagen Passat, Nissan Altima, Hyundai Sonata – they’re all very good, reliable, technologically advanced, functional and safe.
Yet the midsize genre itself does feel a little Steven Spielbergian. That is, it’s been seemingly forever since The Great Spielberg made a Schindler’s List or a Saving Private Ryan. So, too, has it been several generations of midsizers since Toyota blew up the space with the 1992 Camry – the seminal development in midsize sedans of the past four decades, right down to its segment-first triple seal windows and staggeringly good reliability.
The 2016 Kia Optima isn’t going to tip the midsize sedan world upside down like that long-past Camry. But it is a shockingly good entry. I’d take one before the current Camry and before a Fusion, too.
The Accord Hybrid is brilliant, but the regular sedan is only good. The new Sonata, a kissing cousin of the Optima, is as good dynamically as the Optima, but the Kia midsizer is better looking. The Passat – even with its latest tweaks – is not even a contender. The Chrysler 200 and Nissan Altima are just okay and the Mazda6 has a cheap-looking interior, despite excellent road manners and lots of technology.
Pricing for the 2016 Optima is not yet official, but look for it in the $24-000-$37,000 range. Very competitive, especially when you compare it to rivals on a feature-for-feature basis. For that money, you’ll get an Optima with racy styling based on the Sportspace concept shown in Geneva this last spring. That’s a very good thing.
Now to get all the best styling features you might need to buy more than the base car – dual function Xenon HID headlights on the SX, for instance – but the overall profile and stance is the same throughout the range.
This new Optima is bigger and roomier than the outgoing 2015 model, It’s among the more spacious in the class. The cabin also has more soft-touch points where your elbows and fingers engage with the car. The lines and shapes are nice, but the truly standard interior design change is the angled centre stack, tilted at the driver 8.5 degrees.
This makes interfacing with the touch screen so much easier when you’re at the wheel. Speaking of which, you will want the larger and more expensive touch screen; the additional outlay is essential in this age of electronic tools and toys. Kia’s interface is very user-friendly. Even a Luddite will be able to sync a smartphone.
Cargo? The ’16 Optima has more trunk room than the Camry, Altima, Accord and 200. And you won’t suffer any intrusions from hinges or stays. That space is all useful.
As for power, the engine you want is the pricier 1.6-litre turbo with the dual clutch seven-speed gearbox. Loads of power, modern and pretty thrifty at the pump: 178 horsepower/195 lb-ft torque and 8.4 city/6.1 hwy using regular fuel. The base engine is a perfectly useful 2.4-litre four (185 hp/178 lb-ft torque) and the most muscular offering is 2.0-litre four (265 hp/260 lb-ft torque). All are direct injection engines. So very modern.
Midsize sedans are not as popular as they once were, yet they remain important to a solid chunk of buyers. If you’re one of them, you simply must test drive this new Optima when it hits showrooms this fall – especially now that Kia is second only to Porsche in quality based on J.D. Power and Associates’ latest Initial Quality Study.
