Review _ 2018 Stinger GT2 _ Exiting the Hype Train

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou you ah yes the long-awaited kia stinger review this is the gt2 trim level with all-wheel drive and if you take a look up there you're gonna see at fifty two thousand dollars or there abouts that is a big ask for this car now the good thing is is if you peel back a lot of the fluffy it's a strip out all wheel drive you can have the twin turbo version of this car with rear-wheel drive for $38,000 which is still a lot but it's more in line with what this car is but as soon as you add things like the premium audio the eight inch touchscreen and things like all the safety systems you're adding another six grand on and that's too much to swallow now let's get on to the interior you've already seen the exterior montage there's a good mix of materials in here from the alloys and the door the leather on the door the plastics are silver the alloys for the grille surrounds for the speaker or the mid-range speaker and then all throughout this cabin the center grilles have this matte alloy plastics and the kind of the matte silver everywhere there's no plastique Rome and there's a absolute minimal use of glossy black plastic now there is some but it's not over the top except around the shifter which is of course where it gets all disgusting okay so I'm gonna get this out of the way the biggest problem with this car is the Kia branding and I know what you're saying that's so short-sighted everybody says the same thing but it wasn't too long ago they were making vehicles like the Kia Spectra okay and a lot of the mainstream buying public hasn't moved on from those days and they're trying to make this an upscale product and Kia is known for one of the best things that kia does is they combine vehicles with a little bit of character performance quality technology without bending you over and this is a deviation to it and if you if you have fifty plus thousand dollars to spend on a car nine out of ten to ten times somebody's gonna choose an established luxury brand like BMW Audi the Lexus and in many cases those cars may not even be as good as the Stinger but that's the reality of this and I'm kind of feel mixed about this because I'm a huge fan of a car like the Optima does so many things so well it's one of the best midsize cars in the market and it's totally underrated and this is exactly the same problem the Stinger is gonna have people are going to overlook it so let's talk about the pros and cons of this interior space the biggest thing for me is there is a really good use of physical controls there's there's just the right amount of physical controls to make everything work your steering wheel buttons are easy and logically laid out your centre LCD cluster is logically laid out you have analog gauges on the left and right side I mean you basically get in here and know how to use it right away and that's a big pro to this your centre stack area has all physical controls for your infotainment and of course there are you know this is has a touchscreen so you can operate it that way your HVAC controls are some of the simplest of any car but they don't allow you to see the temperature down here you have to use the screen and even when you have the screen turned off it turns it on to show you what temperature it is so that basically you're tied to using the infotainment to have the HVAC HVAC controls working the next huge pro about this vehicle is just the they use so many different types of materials that you're kind of surprised by it and you know it's the way that there are some stitching some attempts at attention to detail here that you don't find in cars well in the mid $30,000 price range although people are catching up you know the headliner material feels pretty good you know you have LED interior lighting I mean most everything here is pretty upscale overall but I got to tell you when you see it in pictures it looks better than it really is in person and I'm gonna tell you why your lower plastics look totally budget which isn't totally uncommon but it's so weird how there's such a spread of like oh here's some premium materials out here's junk that we would put in a $12,000 car this and the worst part about it is this stupid screen this has to be you know aside from the gloss black plastic sticking a screen up here I know it's line of sight this looks so cheesy and generic because there's a massive bezel around it there's no attempt that's style at all the screen is only you know there's about an inch or three inch bezel around the whole side it just looks cheap it looks like somebody just glued a tablet up here I hate so much when you can easily integrate this on the dash but you know again design trends overall the red color in here is really stylish it's really grabbing when you look at it the seats are superbly comfortable the heating and cooling feature works well mostly all the controls are the highlight of this car now here's the counterpoint to all that I'm gonna complain about some of the cheesiness of the interior styling the screen stuck on the dash the copy caning they do with some of the vent work the exterior is definitely a copy and paste job from premium cars but Kia does it extremely well they choose some of the best parts of other cars or other brands and implement it and that's a huge Pro because you're getting premium level or luxury car levels of stuff in here at a lower price point and it's true you are getting that and comfort is a big thing this is an extremely comfortable space front and back seats you have a ton of room in here you've great Headroom hip room shoulder room you know that's what this is about it's not a sports car although they're trying to sell it as being a performance car which we'll get into later but I think you're gonna love driving this around reah if you have to have a sedan hatch this is pretty kick-ass now here we go love it or hate it you hear it a lot the rear end of the stinger and it's a hatchback and that's what makes the styling so weird on this car but I'm gonna tell you something I love it and I love it because this is a massive cargo space this it makes this car totally usable and then when you look at it from the side in the back you can tell they lifted some styling from cars like the Panamera or Maserati and it works really good I've never bought a sedan ever and that's because I don't understand the point of sacrificing style that for doors and then not have a ton of cargo space there's no skin release this to me makes a hell of a lot more sense and it doesn't look it doesn't look totally boring while doing it if you have a ton of cargo I dare you not to try to get in here and fit everything you need it's almost CUV levels of usability now let's head into the shop take a look at the technical aspects and then for a drive welcome to the in the shop segment underneath the kia stinger twin turbo v6 and all-wheel drive option i was extremely curious to see the underbody of this car ever since this was announced because it's kind of platform sharing with the g 80 and it has been shrunk down a bit now Albert Albert Biermann who is the head of vehicle performance for Kia and Hyundai says this doesn't share a lot with the G 80 and I asked Kia what specifically was changed and I didn't get a straight answer but after looking at this we've done 2g 80 videos that G 80 sport which has the same motor and trans as this and the g80 v6 and v8 so I know really what that looks like so basically this whole front end is different and you see it right in the suspension design they retain the split lower control arms to a duel blower ball joint setup and that's for direct steering and it does have an aluminum knuckle design now what's different is they did away with double wishbone suspension and now you have a strut and depending on what model you get you either get electronically adjustable dampers or without it and honestly this this Ty's rebounding compression together and it can vary itself based on your driving mode or it can be a little bit adaptive from driving this I'm gonna say it right off the bat I don't think that it's worth it it's not a big enough change in driving converses comfort versus sport to justify the cost so if you're looking to save money it's not that big of a deal this says Brembos pretty much stock and it does have brake ducts here or well they're they're kind of kick ups that just help direct heir to this dust shield to cool off the rotors the other thing you're gonna see is their there are vibration Isolators on the strut body themselves up top and you can see kind of where I'm pointing at and you know there is some attempts here to smooth out airflow reduce road noise and then reduce vibration as well because this is supposed to be a Grand Touring machine now arts car in the middle of the vehicle you see the transfer case you see the 8-speed automatic transmission and this has I believe this is on its third revision now and it has been shrunk down since the first generation model and this is a rear-wheel drive architecture first with all-wheel drive slapped on later so that's a cool feature you have an aluminum you know transmission cradle and then dual exhausts all the way back now the middle half of the stinger is as close to the GA t as you're gonna find and then you get back here and you can tell basically this whole section has been lobbed off and redone the subframe carrier is different the suspension multi-link designs different the control arms are slightly different you have a stamp steel carrier or subframe carrier all your lower control arms are stamped steel and the only aluminum that's back here is your upper control arm and your knuckle design now the other thing you're going to notice is there's not as much use of underbody panels and there's a lot less direction of airflow compared to the GAC so it flows over here you do have this kind of director but then you get to this back section and there's absolutely no time set undercoating you know sound reduction it's just a wide-open panel and I think this is one of the reasons why this vehicle is a lot noisier than the g8 g80 and they don't make the attempts here and that's part of the cost-cutting that they've done to get this to a price point changing the front half of the suspension it's easier for packaging easy for assembly all of that and then reducing all the little things that you do to a vehicle to help with reducing vibration noise all that that's all been stripped away here in favor of reducing costs now there is a benefit to things here if you're gonna modify this and I'm assuming at this price point people are gonna modify it the exhaust is not integrated to the exhaust tip so you could change the muffler and probably the exhaust and still keep the factory look with the bumpers so that's kind of a pro if you want to keep a factory look but change the exhaust the other thing is you have camber and toe adjustment obviously toe adjustment but you do have camber adjustment in the back so something to know let's take a look under the hood now before I talk about the engine it's time to talk about the weight and balance of the Kia stinger and I want to redirect for a second just because I'm talking about constantly what they have stripped away from this architecture does not mean that it's a bad car it doesn't mean anything really other than hey they're trying to make this more affordable for people real people of course and when you look at the weights it's far less weight than the Genesis g80 is at forty one hundred and forty pounds it also has an incredibly good cross weight about fifty one point four percent so basically you're left in your right weight once you need it to be as close to 50% as possible and it's extremely close which means you're gonna have better and more consistent turning left to right and dynamically turning it's going to feel well more natural or neutral now the motor is the highlight of the the stinger I would absolutely unless you were broke and you had to have this car I wouldn't have it any other way but the twin-turbo v6 this is one of Hyundai's best motors in terms of performance it's smooth it's tuned well there's no weirdness and programming it feels very powerful almost like a naturally aspirated motor but with that thrust of the turbos no yes it does heat soak a little bit of course like all turbo cars when you beat on it back-to-back but this is an extremely fun car to drive and then Hyundai finally and Kia finally have programmed their 8-speed automatic to perform properly and this is something where they have the genesis beat here the transmission performance is great compared to and I mean if transmission performance and speed is what you want made it to this motor this is the car for you absolutely now let's get into the driving segment and I just want to say this I'm gonna cut this review a little bit shorter because I'm gonna be doing the rear-wheel drive of this stinger and I need to leave some on the table to talk about that so let's take this for a drive and see how it is setting off in the brand new Kia stinger gt2 all-wheel drive in this weather it's about 50 degrees this car has so much traction it's like it's a non-issue with stability and I had this in the snow and yeah it's a little bit squirrely of course but if you're somebody that's in an all weather or all season climate you probably want to opt for all-wheel drive because this vehicle is lively once you get into more of the sport mode and other modes like that now one of the things that I noticed immediately getting into this vehicle and this is one of the biggest problems with it is there are so many creaks and rattles in here the door panels creaking the rear deck or rear seats are rattling the moonroof is rattling and I know this is probably your first you know generation or you know first-year build I really hope that they fix some of this stuff because it is super annoying for a vehicle like this namely when you get out of the G 80 that is like dead silent for the most part you know that they're capable of getting this all buttoned up but it's just not I'm gonna come to a stop here and you know I have traction stability control off and I'm taking manual control of the transmission and I'm gonna see just how this thing kind of gets off the line and if it puts its power down Oh interesting all right the first an annoying thing about this is there's no true manual mode you take over manual mode by pulling one of the paddles and the worst thing is is when you come to a stop it just puts you back in the deep you lose your first gear starts you constantly have to reek lick it going back into first gear and the traction and stability control still kicks back in on the all-wheel-drive model now the other thing to talk about is the way that this vehicle handles over broken and shoddy pavement and I do some pretty nasty pavement drives just to see how the dampers perform either in comfort mode sport mode or adaptive in the case of the Stinger it's definitely more on the firm side this is more on the sporty side even in comfort mode you do feel a lot of the bumps it does feel firm but not it's it's not nonsensical firm but I wish that the adaptive dampers were better at going from soft to fully firm there's not a lot of you know there's not a huge difference between the comfort in the sport mode now I'm going to come to a stop here and see how this gets off the line I'm gonna put this in sport and we're gonna try launch control you put it in sport traction stability off hold down the break and just peg the throttle and then you should just take off like a bat out of hell manual mode first gear okay how does it feel the twin-turbo v6 on this is amazing and I said the same thing on the g8 eSport it's really almost the same identical experience to me the biggest difference is the transmission tuning on here is way better when you're in sport with the stability and traction control off it allows you to hold revs the transmission will bang off the rev limiter and I'll give you a quick example of that and that's something that the g8 eSport would not do no matter what mode you were in and it was super annoying but again you have to have the traction and stability control off and pretty much in sport to enjoy that benefit now the up shifts and down shifts are really quick so I'll just pull a couple gears so you can see third second first and you can tell you can tell the 8-speed automatic in here has very it's a very versatile transmission now they can program it in a more performance car manner and it can operate almost like a luxury car and I think that's gonna be a huge Pro for a lot of people that are gonna buy this because you can really drive it it's so smooth it is you know luxury car like and then you can kind of pound on it I wish it was quicker it's not as quicker it's not as quick as the ZF 8-speed or even the Lexus like the RC F transmission but I think for most people you're not going to find any offence with this because of you can ignore it because the engine is so good now in terms of handling you know I've really beat this thing around and it's one of the areas where I'm not a big fan of it honestly I thought this thing is gonna be a lot more a lot more fun to drive and there's a lot of dive there's a lot of squat you feel just the suspension overly soft under braking under turnin it doesn't set really well it just has a lot of roll before it gets set I mean it is confidence-inspiring but it's not as sporty as you would expect it to be but most people what they're gonna do with this is they're gonna just cruise it around this is a straight up cruiser I mean it's got balls don't get me wrong you're gonna be smoking pretty much anybody off the line when you get on the highway and pound this you're gonna be you're gonna be looking down you're like holy crap am i flying and you know a lot of that same feeling came with the g 80 but the G 80 is so far more quiet refined an interior cabin you can feel like it's put together better I think there's more a laminated glass or acoustic laminated glass on that and you don't even you can't tell the speed at all but in here you get a little bit of the fake engine noise it seems a louder to me that well there's more exhaust tone which is hard to say there's not a lot of exhaust tone but because of the hatch in the back you get more wind noise you get more of a visceral sense of acceleration and the stinger and I think that's gonna be a huge attraction a lot of people I think it needs an exhaust I hate to say it but I think it does and I think a lot of people are gonna do that and probably some type of intake for this as well to bring it to because this motor has so much to offer final thoughts on the kia stinger gt2 all-wheel drive now this is amazing that this is a first attempt for Kia making a GT car it shows that the people that are running the company have a good understanding of what they want to do here they've created a lot of hype a lot of interest in this largely because of the looks it's a rear-wheel drive platform that's attainable and affordable that's a massive thing for people we see we're constantly inundated with cars that are so expensive you can't afford it and people lose interest in that you could buy this you can literally afford to buy it if you spec it out right now I spent a lot of time talking about what this car is not let's talk about what it is the pros are this the engine if you don't have enough money to get the twin-turbo v6 save your money for it because this is how you own it the second thing they've done right finally is the automatic transmission for a tour converting unit finally performs quickly it's not the greatest it's not ZF it's not BMW Audi levels of performance but in sport mode in manual there's no manual mode but in sport mode if you click the paddles you turn off stability in traction you literally have control of the transmission it ups shifts and down shifts at rub matches down shifts it's great that you can take it from mundane to more performance and have some fun that way it's a dynamic handling car there's still some rotation feeling to it it's not an understeer fest now granted the stability control system does kick back in but it is fun to drive and it is extremely quick in a straight line a lot of fun to be in the comfort is a high factor of this it's got a great interior space it's super comfortable I love it at night I love the ambient lighting the backseat comforts good and then the hatchback really this is what sells it it's a usable car all year around you could drive this every day you don't have to have a second car you don't to park this and worry pile crap in it like it's a CUV pile people in it just enjoy it for what it is spend your money and enjoy it now the negatives are this they've had to sacrifice here to keep the costs down he stripped out double wishbone suspension for struts in the front he got rid of the reinforced reinforced alloy strut towers the rigidity is not there the sound isolation is not there this the overall solidness of the interior this thing has rattles and creaks and it's totally unacceptable honestly I mean for a press car it should not have that issue it's only got about five thousand miles on it but I understand this is it like you know first batch of production so maybe they'll fix these issues and fit and finish now the less negatives are there's some cheesiness here and I can't stand it fake hood vents I mean come on really why I mean they did this on the Veloster and then they got rid of it for the last model year suck in the last model year they got smart but now they're doing it here in a car that shouldn't have it the stuck on screen on the dashboard some of them and not me and material colors and choices it's some blandness in there but overall this is a pretty cool car I can't wait to see what Kia does with this and I Drive the rear wheel drive version of it take care you\n"