After a day of driving the new generation Kia Rio in Portugal, writes Brian Byrne, I'm pretty convinced that it will offer a viable alternative to the established superminis in Ireland—if the price is right.
The outgoing Rio, despite its aged design, has been a serious bread-and-butter car for the brand in Ireland in recent years, with buyers going for its good value and reliability at the price point of less than €14,000.
This time around, the Rio isn't going to be able to hit that low spot, and will have to compete on quality, driveability, and sheer likeability to make a similar sales impression.
We don't yet have a price point for the new car, due here in the middle of October.
The 83hp 1.2 petrol and 89hp 1.4 diesel engines are both A rated for Road Tax in Ireland, so it is likely that the petrol version will become significantly the more popular.
Indeed, given that the Rio is built in Korea rather than Europe—as the cee'd, Venga and Sportage are—Kia Ireland's people had to do a brave little bit of reverse thinking and opt for an 80:20 order ratio in favour of petrol, the opposite of how the outgoing Rio has sold.
There's actually a 1.1 diesel with an astonishingly low 85g/km CO2 emissions and 88mpg equivalent available on the market in Europe, but in Ireland there's currently no tax advantage in going below the 100g/km level, so it's the 1.4 oil-burner only that will be on offer here at launch.
We do know that there will be two grades here, LX and EX. The 17" alloys that were on the international launch cars won't be on cars in Ireland. Nor will the leather seats we sat in as we spun the Rio delicately through the National Park hills around Sintra. But it does have the unique Kia 7-Year no quibble and transferable warranty.
The new Rio is longer, lower, and has an extended wheelbase compared to the outgoing car. There's more head and knee room both back and front, and the luggage space is 6 percent more.
Although there's as yet no ENCAP crash test information for the car, Kia Europe's Benny Oeyen told me 'we always expect a top safety rating'. The new Rio is stronger, but lighter than the old version. Safety stuff includes Electronic Stability Control, Traction Control and the same Emergency Stop Signal in the brake lights as we got recently in the new Picanto.
On today's drives, I liked the car a lot. It follows recent new models from Kia in better interiors, excellent instrumentation, and a strong degree of youthful appeal.
Let's wait for the Irish drive experience before a full imprimatur, but I don't think my initial impressions will be diminished much, if at all, when I get into it at home.
