Review _ 2016 Kia K900 _ Almost There

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the 2016 kia k900 while some might argue that kia is not a luxury brand this sure looks like a full-blown luxury car to me now you may have been lucky enough to see the kia commercial starring lebron james and all his acting wisdom and that's actually where i got this vehicle because i took him two on one with cameron bear style and just won it straight up now here's my point about those commercials really is kia is trying to give their advertising a sense of humor about the k900 using a guy that also doesn't take himself all that seriously and then you look at the vehicle as a whole and this thing is dead serious and the thing is it's so serious it it kind of lacks a soul it lacks a personality and i think that's one of its biggest shortcomings now when i did my video on the genesis g80 i made the statement well it kind of looks like every other car now i regret it because looking at the k900 it does look like other cars very specific models the whole front end of this vehicle could be easily confused for a 7 series bmw the back could be a lexus ls and the point is is if you just started looking at it from different angles you can see different cars in here now the problem is for somebody who wants one of those vehicles they're just going to go buy a lexus a bmw a mercedes this is a huge lost opportunity here for kia to stand out because people don't know it as a luxury brand they could have gone a lot more edgy here and i think they would have been more successful in doing something they did with the optima or some of the things they've done with the kia soul and just some of the quirkiness is just not here one of the best parts of the k900 is the rear end or the rump it just has this really solid muscular look to it it gives this sense of stability and solidity throughout the whole car and that just travels down the whole side profile of it if you're one of those people that's going to buy the k900 to be chauffeured around or just to haul some golf bags or luggage in general this beast will not disappoint i fit all my camera gear in here even width-wise i could fit two monster full-sized chuck and luggages in here and a carry-on bag so there's no doubt that there's ample trunk space in here and then of course you have this automatic trunk release this kia has the bh-l chassis you know what the l stands for large yeah i'm assuming it's large or extra length this actually is the previous generation genesis equals chassis it's the same foundation now the problem with that is the new genesis rides on the more modern version that hyundai outsourced engineering and design of damping rate spring rates to lotus so you don't get any of that here this is really the older platform that's a shame it is and you can tell on the actual ride quality of this car which we'll talk about later but there are some good things here like the fact that it's right wheel drive and you can get it a little sideways it just needs a v8 yeah and that does have a v8 option i was admiring this little window so you could see your sway bar ooh they should have a plexi window here oh that'd be real lights like a bandpass box yeah the next thing we have is double wishbone suspension and on the top part of the double wishbone we have two ball joints so now the bottom part you got two ball joints too yeah so this is a more robust front end for certain designed to be a luxury car to handle the weight looks very european it is it's a looks like a direct copy off of the or even a lexus i think is like that now yeah the ls has a double double ball joint looks they all look identical for the most part audi's like that maybe even a passe all passes have it too so there are some use of aluminum down here you have uh cast aluminum lower and well actually the whole lower control arms cast aluminum uh you have hydraulic power steering down here that's rare yeah very very odd but a welcome thing actually next we come to the gearbox it looks pretty large it is this is a recycled eight-speed automatic that we saw on the genesis this is a hyundai kia designed gearbox and it is extremely smooth but the trade-off is it's pitifully slow to respond to any manual downshifts that you request but you know for this type of car what do you expect but it is huge monstrous we're in the back of the kia 900 k900 scott and we see some aluminum we see uh a drainage nipple the battery must be in the trunk yeah probably take a puff on that well i'm sure it's got some real nice battery acid coming out of there and you spotted something very sporty what was that oh the camber adjustment yeah so that way you can stance this baby right from the factory he'll get a lot of degrees of cambridge out of that yeah these bolts cambridge the cambridge adjustment swap the sway bars do a custom alignment this thing moves around a lot i'm really kind of surprised yeah it's rear-wheel drive but it's very lively in the back it's something i didn't expect because the genesis is a lot more stable feeling on this car but that could have to do with a suspension right yeah suspension tuning right but we have what would you say 3.8 38 38 this is a potent motor direct injection you know the usual slate of hyundai kia power plants and uh i don't have a lot of complaints about the drivetrain other than the transmission being slow it's a luxury car yes but there's some throat to this motor it's not completely it's okay it just sounds well that's what you get the v8 for right it sounds like it's working hard yes it does you're right it's like you're driving an old suv with a like an isuzu trooper with a three whatever leader it is man that thing's barely can push that that's kind of not that extreme but this thing sounds like it's working it does sound like it's working but it's moving though that's that's the one good thing i mean i know you drove it in the snow so but in the dry this thing's potent when i got behind the wheel of the k900 one of the first things i noticed was just how much gadgetry is in here you're just inundated by buttons and all these features you have you know radar cruise control lane assist steering wheel heater uh parking sensors the hud button the traction control button the blind spot monitoring really what does that have to do with the driving experience well kind of let's find out we just got done talking about this vehicle in the shop how this is the last generation suspension and chassis from hyundai and kia but one of the things that i wasn't expecting especially from all the reviews that i saw was just how poorly this car behaves on broken and uneven pavement and it's completely unacceptable to me at this actually at this price range or style of vehicle you would expect that bumps undulations would be completely dampened and controlled and you'd get this sense of isolation obviously this is a luxury car but you don't get that at all in fact i don't know really what the problem is here if it's just a combination effect of uh poor spring rates damping rates you know could be bushings isolators that are just not tuned properly here but when you hit a bump uh when you hit just broken pavement it feels like you're in a truck you the suspension has this springboard effect where you just feel this unevenness and the shake all throughout the chassis through the floorboard and the steering wheel on this car and it just is gets really old really fast now the next part of this is steering feel what i mean by that is how well the car responds to your inputs and how much is transmitted from the road through the tires into the wheel and then back into your body in the case of the k900 this is not the best car for turning in and steering response it takes a lot of steering effort to get this car to change direction now in a luxury car that's really not a big deal it's not expected here that this has rage razor sharp responses because the people that are going to be driving this don't want to have the car changing direction at the twitch of a hand now the next thing is turning radius for a big car you would expect this to handle like a boat or more like a big truck or suv it's very car like the turning circle is nothing like you'd expect it's a big pro actually the second thing i really like about the driving experience is this one touch turn off this center screen i don't have to go through menus i just tap display and it turns off the screen and you can focus more on driving so how about that how is the acceleration here well let's kind of find out i don't think you're gonna have to worry about the v6 or v8 performance here this is pretty much the right amount of horsepower for this chassis and the type of car it is now the thing that i don't like is how the traction control is tuned it's very very invasive any type of turning and throttle acceleration it cuts power and it cuts power in a big way so if you're really one of those people that are going to drive this car in a more sporty fashion i disable the traction control leave the stability on because this car can get tail happy now we're gonna put this car in sport and really it has four drive modes you have sport which synthetically increases steering feel makes the transmission always stick in a higher gear so it's it's ready to rev uh you have normal mode which is just you know regular mode you have eco where the transmission does not do anything but stay in the highest gear it's throttle response is really poor and then you have smart where the car automatically adjusts based on your driving so if you start driving like a monster it keeps the revs up this it feels more sporty but for this case we're gonna go in manual mode and sport through the turns this car's first feel is to want understeer brakes are a little slow to bite and that's one thing i don't get a lot of braking confidence in this car and it does feel pretty mushy in the turns it does have a softer it has a softer response it's got more body roll the body control is not on the sporty side here at all the second thing is this transmission and when you're in manual mode and you have it in sentence sport it doesn't hold revs it will always auto up shift when you get to the red line the second thing is is much like the genesis this transmission is extremely slow to respond to manual downshifts it just doesn't want to do it and it takes three four seconds a lot of times before it responds but you can feel the rear wanting to rotate if you have traction and stability control off you can put this car sideways all right let's take a look at the acceleration here that's one of the good things about the k900 once you turn traction control off and you get stability control off it really lets you have a lot more fun then like the genesis the genesis traction stability system was very intrusive even when you had it off this car allows you to have just a little bit of fun and that's a big pro as well now we're going to talk about one of this car's absolute best features and that is road isolation on smooth pavement it's overall refinement and quietness this is one of the more quiet cars you will ever get into under a hundred thousand dollars and they've done so much here with the laminated glass the insulation you know thicker headliner all these things keep the car quiet but what i brought along is this and no it's not an anal thermometer this is a decibel meter set to c waiting and slow response at 40 miles an hour you're at 70 decibels and to put that in perspective that's more quiet than an arby's bathroom stall it's just a really quiet lush experience and the good thing about having a quiet cabin is it makes longer road trips or just trips and high traffic areas a lot more enjoyable to deal with we can ramble about the exterior and driving dynamics all day but a luxury car really starts with its interior now you might be worried that kia doesn't know how to do that but i can tell you every single person that's been in here has been wowed by a lot of the materials just an overall fit and finish now what do i mean by that well the first thing i noticed when i got in here was this headliner material it feels like suede is tremendous you go right down to the dash and it's actually wrapped in real leather it's not this vinyl plastic pressed feeling material all the physical materials in here are just extremely high quality now let's talk about interior usability such as the knobs switches and buttons that you're interacting with every day this is where the k900 is kind of a mixed bag but let's start with the pros because there's so many this center stack layout it's about as good as it can get physical controls there's no capacitive touch or sliders here you know exactly where everything's at and it feels good to interact with you have rotary knobs for your volume and tuning and physical dedicated buttons to go to media sirius xm am fm map it's directly here the next huge pro here is the tactile feedback that you get from all the knobs and switches and that's because they have this slight rubberized coating all over them so when you're adjusting the volume you just have this sense of quality your cruise control buttons your window switches and you'll never feel more satisfied hanging up on your mistress as you do in the k900 when you hit the disconnect button here it just has this really great feel now before i get into the negatives for a 50 60 000 car it is amazing what they've been able to do here and package all of this in here for that price that said there are some negatives so here they are there is a lot of shiny plastic looking material on the dash on the door trims and yes i know some of this is supposed to be real wood but you would never guess with how lacquered it is and not only that is it just collects so much dust when you're in the sun it just looks like somebody you know shook their dandruff all over it and it's really just annoying to me the second thing is some of these switches and knobs you feel inundated by them and like in the case of the motorized seat controls they're on the door panels here and at first you think well that's kind of an intuitive place but it just seems a little clumsy to use and you may get used to some of this stuff too the last batch of negatives are more just nitpicking some of the attention to detail these are things that can easily be changed but here it is your central command rotary knob your volume knob and tuning knob feel like cheap plastic there's just no weight to them at all and it's something you're interacting with all the time same thing with this shift by wire console joystick it just feels like plastic it feels like a huge chunk of plastic in your hand and then you have this glossy piano black buttons all over that are full of fingerprints dust and micro scratches it just doesn't work for me here the last thing is your ambient lighting at night the car interior looks pretty good overall it feels classy except for this cheesy red ambient lighting all over the interior this kia red that they do now that wouldn't be a big deal if you could actually turn it off through these menus or adjust the color to what you would like but the only way to actually get rid of it is to dim out the interior all the way to the dimmest setting which kind of turns it to a point where you can't see it that's something i like to see them address as well let's talk about comfort and accessibility and when you get in this back seat the first reaction most people are going to have is holy because you could be gilbert grape's mom and still fit in here with room to spare this is one of the few vehicles i ever had tarbowsky cart me around in the back seat and that's because this bad boy has a vip package and what does that mean it means that the lovely ladies you're gonna pack back here are gonna be in comfort my favorite part is you have reclining rear seats and that is just stupendous second thing you have is these privacy shades for this part of the window and then the back part of the window so you don't get your bald spot doesn't get burned up in the sun the next thing is you have individual hvac controls for both passengers which is really nice and you have individual seat heaters and seat coolers for both seats now the negative part here is there's only one blower motor in this interior of the car and that's what i'm talking about attention to detail so when you turn up the fan back here it creates a tornado in the front seat it is so loud so this is one of those areas well at this price point do you expect it well not really but at the same time you got to go all the way here with that so the last thing to talk about is the actual infotainment setup and this is the same setup you're going to find in the genesis g80 of course with different fonts because kia has to change that up but overall the usability is identical the lexicon audio in here is really good now it's a little flat so you have to you know tweak the eq to get the brightness out of the speakers but cd and aux audio are really good obviously usb one thing i'd like to see support in here is for uncompressed audio files when you get to this type of sound system i'd like to hear some 24-bit audio or something just you know you know uncompressed essentially in terms of speed and usability it's fast you're going to have very little complaints about it the central command knob gets you through most of the menus or you can use touch now when you get to the map screen you don't have a multi-touch setup here you can't do your gestures like on your phone you have to use this knob to zoom in and out but it's little things that you get used to but this setup is definitely one of the better systems and most the cars in this price range so most are going to be looking for a conclusion on the k900 this is kia's first attempt at a full-blown luxury car and it's really an amazing effort it's shocking what they've been able to do here now the thing is is the mass market or this segment of buyers is not ready for a kia luxury car it's just the sad reality of it and kia knows it and they're gonna have to work on their brand identity a little bit and they're also gonna have to work on the fact that they just can't value add their way into the luxury market yes adding all these features is great you get a lot of value for your money but there is not a lot of prestige here they need to work on creating a stylish standout physically appealing vehicle that kind of you know it can attach to your just the emotional side it just needs to be a little bit more edgy and then secondly hopefully they go to a second generation they have a great chassis in the new in the new generation that's used in the genesis it's a totally better platform and i think once they combine some of these elements adapt their styling and bring all that together this is going to be a really exciting car in the future this is one of the weirdest roadblocks i've ever seen and that's because they shut down the roads for me when i'm doing these performance tests they know how serious my artwork is here that they just want to shut everything down for me well i even bother putting this hole here it's for the drain plug drain drain all but you still got to take one two three four five six seven eight nine ten maybe 11 or 12 bolts to get to the fill tree makes no sense\n"