The new generation Kia cee'd will have a choice of diesel engines and a petrol engine when it comes to Ireland in May, writes Brian Byrne from the international launch of the car in Marbella.
The new car will come in three grades for the Irish market, TX, EX and Platinum. All versions come with Bluetooth phone linking and media streaming as standard, along with air-conditioning, in a high entry level specification.
The diesels will be an 89hp 1.4 and a 128hp 1.6. There will also be a 99hp 1.4 petrol, which will be the cheapest version available at €18,995. The 1.4 diesel starts at €21,995, with the EX specification coming in at €22,495. Both diesels will be Band A and the petrol will be Band B. All three cars come with with 6-speed manual gearboxes, and a 6-speed automatic will be available.
The latest Kia is longer, lower and wider than its predecessor, with more leg, elbow and headroom, and also more room in the luggage compartment. The wheelbase, already one of the longest in the class, has been retained.
Among the details are an instruments cluster that looks like a good analogue system but is in fact a 7" high definition LCD screen.
The new car comes with the same 7-year warranty which Kia launched in Europe with the original cee'd and which has since been rolled out to all its other models.
A first drive today in the new car showed that once again Kia has raised the bar in terms of quality and design, putting up further challenges not just to Japanese equivalents but also the key European competitor in the compact family segment.
The first generation of the car was launched five years ago and has been highly sucessful across Europe. The car will launch in Ireland with a 5-door hatch, and a wagon version of the new cee'd will come to Ireland in September/October. A 3-door comes to Ireland next January.
Hyndai/Kia is now the fifth biggest car company in the world, with more than 6m units sold in 2011. Kia models represent some 2.5m of these. In Ireland, some 5,000 units of th original cee'd were sold, and Kia Ireland intends to build on that with a car that is clearly better than the original.
