Friday 1 June 2007

What's outside today 6 - Kia cee'd

Off to Newcastle today in the Kia cee'd.

Now the prospect of driving to the other end of the country in something a) inexpensive b) Korean might look like a bit of a let-down after the chance to test the Aston Vantage earlier in the week, but actually I'm rather looking forward to it.


First, Newcastle is one of my favourite Verdict destinations - I'll be sure to get to the Sage centre for a cup of tea at some stage. Second, the cee'd is one of my favourite industry stories at the moment - it's a cracking car that isn't particularly Korean at all. Designed in Germany and built in Slovakia, it's Kia's first 'European' model. Even if it weren't a great product, you'd almost have to buy it because of its unbeatable seven-year guarantee.

I'm also hoping for some good B-road driving on my favourite Lincolnshire routes, which I've written about here before; this time I also want to investigate whether I can pick out a similarly interesting north-south B-road option through East/North Yorks. beyond the Humber Bridge as well.


PS - the c'eed has one decidedly non-European feature - a right-hand indicator stalk. I'm sure it was on the left at one stage on pre-production or early production cars, although I could be mistaken. Not that I'm complaining too much - this used to be considered correct for RHD cars and can still be found on Australian and Malaysian models (e.g. Holden/Vauxhall Monaro). For some reason, quite lot of Korean cars have a right-hand indicator stalk, but I'm not sure why, given that Korea is not an RHD market.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Of course right-hand indicator stalks are fimiliar to fans of W123 and W124 Mercedes-Benz cars