Aussie Motoring

Kia Motors Australia has issued a recall for around 2,300 Sportage vehicles built between November 2001 and December 2002.

It seems that high temperatures in the engine bay have caused some fan blades to become brittle and break. Kia will replace the faulty fan blades free of charge.

Five-Star crash safety rating for entry level SUV in frontal and side impact crash tests

The 2007 Kia Sportage earned a five-star crash safety rating, the highest possible, for all seating positions in the latest frontal and side impact crash tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Motoring journalists do not have an easy job. You might think that there would better job than driving around in new cars all the time. But it must be so difficult to remain objective about each individual car when you do that all the time.

I mean how can you remain objective about a Kia Sorento as you drive it this week when the car you drove last week was a Lancer Evolution?

Despite those problems most motoring writers in Australia do manage to remain objective and that’s why it’s interesting to see what some motoring journos consider to be the worst cars of 2005.

Kia Sorento - Stephen Scorby considered that calling the Sorento a lemon was an insult to citrus fruit and suggested that the car was made out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners

Kia Sportage - Paul Pottinger found that both he and Stephen Scorby became highly agitated when they tackled their first roundabout in a Sportage.

Nissan Pathfinder - Samantha Stevens found that driving the Pathfinder reminded her of driving a tractor with a flat tyre. (Now having actually done that makes me wonder whether any vehicle certified safe to use on our roads could really be that bad)

Holden Barina - Isaac Bober decided that the Daewoo sourced Barina was a huge disappointment and a “pathetic imitation” of what the market once loved back in the beep beep Barina days.

I don’t know about those vehicles, I haven’t driven any of them yet, but I began to find that my Hyundai Grandeur XG started to suck majorly as soon as it ran out of warranty in March this year. It was then that I realised that the Grandeur wasn’t really a car but more a collection of very expensive spare parts that moved along the road in very close proximity to each other.