How do you pronounce the Kia Stonic? Is it Stonic or Stonich? Anyway, the 2021 Kia Stonic has been updated and the facelift now comes with a GT-Line variant, which has a turbocharged three-cylinder petrol engine. Paul Maric tests it out to see if this small car that shares a platform with the Kia Rio is worth checking out.
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
Read the full review: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-reviews/2021-kia-stonic-gt-line-review/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=review&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=single-car-review
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:53
Interior 03:16
Infotainment 04:55
Safety Tech 06:35
Practicality 07:13
On the road 10:26
Verdict 15:45
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#kia #stonic #review #gtline
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
Read the full review: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-reviews/2021-kia-stonic-gt-line-review/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=review&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=single-car-review
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:53
Interior 03:16
Infotainment 04:55
Safety Tech 06:35
Practicality 07:13
On the road 10:26
Verdict 15:45
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
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Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au
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#kia #stonic #review #gtline
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul, and I finally found a car with a similar name to me.
00:03 It's the Kia Stonic, but if you want to be ethnically diverse like where I'm from,
00:08 you'd call it the Kia Stonic, because Maric, Maric.
00:10 Anyway, this here is brand new, because it's a facelift, but it's also a new variant.
00:15 It's called the Kia Stonic, Stonic GT line.
00:19 It's priced at just under $30,000, and it competes with things like the Mazda CX-3,
00:24 the Hyundai Venue, the Toyota Yaris Cross, and the Nissan Juke.
00:28 It's a competitive segment, because they're all SUVs based off small cars.
00:32 This one here is based off the Rio.
00:33 Today, we're going to do a detailed review of this car.
00:36 If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes
00:40 up on the screen there, or if you're on YouTube, just scroll down and use the chapters below.
00:44 And if you haven't done so already, I'd love it if you could hit subscribe and press the
00:47 bell icon, so you can find out every single time we drive cars that have a similar name
00:51 to me.
00:52 Now, what do you reckon about the design?
00:54 The GT line gets all of these trim highlights and the GT line body kit.
00:59 The design's interesting, because it feels like it's not quite as modern as a lot of
01:04 Kia's newest cars.
01:05 So things like the Sorento, the Carnival, they all have this really edgy look to them.
01:10 This kind of feels like Kia of yesterday, and it follows through to the interior as
01:14 well.
01:15 We'll get to that in a second, but look, it doesn't mean that it doesn't look good, I
01:17 just think it doesn't look as sharp as some of Kia's newer cars.
01:20 But you can see the design highlights here, like this black section, you've got some brushed
01:24 aluminium there, and then the darker tones that mix in with the piano black.
01:29 Now, it's interesting here, this is pretty much all blocked off.
01:32 There's like a couple of little holes there, but for the most part, the cooling is limited
01:36 to these bottom sections.
01:37 This is kind of just like a bit of a garnish.
01:39 But if we hop over here, this is pretty cool for this segment.
01:42 So full LED headlights with daytime running lights, and then that top section turns into
01:47 an indicator as well, which I reckon is pretty cool.
01:49 Jump around to the side.
01:51 Down here you've got 17-inch alloy wheels, and it follows that design trend of the brushed
01:56 chrome look on the outside, and then the darker section inside.
01:59 You have 55 profile tyres, and not quite as big as the CX-30, but wheel arch protectors
02:05 here despite the fact this is front-wheel drive only.
02:07 Now, this is interesting because Kia has done the right in handling tune in Australia, and
02:11 generally with the GT-line cars, certainly with the Cerato, they've been pretty firm.
02:15 So I'll be interested to see with that much profile on the rubber whether this is the
02:19 same story.
02:20 Okay, now let's move down the side of the car.
02:23 More piano black up the top of that wing mirror with the indicator built in.
02:27 I really like this two-tone look.
02:29 We're seeing a lot of this on small cars these days.
02:32 Really just breaks up the paint job and gives it a lot of definition as it approaches you.
02:36 And then they break up the black section of the roof with these roof racks here.
02:40 We've got privacy glass, and similar to the Carnival, that roof rack comes down the back
02:44 and has a little section that sticks out.
02:46 Kind of makes it look like it's moving, which I think is cool.
02:49 And then a chrome garnish down here.
02:51 Come around to the rear of the car.
02:53 More black along the top here.
02:55 You can actually see part of the roof there is still in the red colour shark fin antenna
03:00 too.
03:01 No LED lights at the back here, they're incandescent, and then you get your Stonic badge there with
03:06 GT-line.
03:07 Now, let me know in the comments section below, what do you reckon about the design?
03:09 Do you think it looks good?
03:10 Do you think it looks good enough for the price?
03:12 Let me know what you're thinking.
03:13 Okay, so we are inside the Kia Stonic.
03:16 Let's have a look at the key.
03:18 Here it is here.
03:19 You have lock, unlock, boot, and then on the back you have the Kia logo.
03:25 By the way, that's getting updated.
03:26 There's a new Kia logo coming.
03:28 Let me know what you think of it in the comments section below.
03:30 It's a proximity sensing key, so you just leave that in your pocket, grab the door handle
03:34 and you push the little button on the door handle to unlock the car, and then you have
03:37 push button start inside.
03:38 Righto, what about styling?
03:40 So styling wise, I think it's nicely presented.
03:44 There are a lot of dark tones on the top, down the bottom, but it is broken up with
03:47 these silver sort of brushed aluminium highlights and this faux carbon fibre.
03:52 Might be real, you never know, but I don't think it is.
03:56 But in terms of the actual materials themselves, there is a lot of hard stuff around here.
04:07 So I don't know, like I mentioned earlier, this feels like a Kia of yesterday.
04:10 It doesn't feel sort of high tech and advanced like the Sorento and the Carnival.
04:15 I mean they have the cool 3D LED elements inside the doors and all of the materials
04:20 just felt really high end and premium.
04:22 This kind of feels like they've just thrown it all together.
04:25 Sorry about that as well, that's going to keep happening throughout our video.
04:29 It's just a battery discharge warning.
04:30 Now what about your touch points?
04:32 So that is softish and then you also have padding on the doors as well.
04:37 How soft is it?
04:38 Well we have tested the surfaces with our durometer.
04:41 If you want to see how this car compares to other cars that we've tested before, scroll
04:44 down and have a look in the description below.
04:47 Now what about build quality?
04:49 So look, it's OK, it just feels a little bit wonky down the centre here but the rest feels
04:55 pretty good.
04:56 OK moving on to infotainment, you get an 8 inch infotainment screen.
04:59 If you want to see a detailed review of this, click up here to watch one that we recorded
05:03 earlier.
05:04 But today I'll just give you a brief run through.
05:05 So this is your home screen, you can see up here you can select different driver profiles
05:09 and there's like a shaded overlay of the map plus the time.
05:12 You can scroll across to get the rest of your map menus.
05:15 There is inbuilt satellite navigation, that's a pretty decent unit, it's nice and quick
05:21 as well and easy to use.
05:22 You also have different features like inbuilt Bluetooth connectivity for standard phone connections
05:28 but there is no voice recognition when you press that button, nothing happens unless
05:32 you have smartphone mirroring paired.
05:34 You do have sounds of nature, so they're the soothing inbuilt tunes to keep your children
05:39 quiet and relaxed.
05:40 You also have the ability to play video through the screen via a USB device and also record
05:45 voice memos.
05:46 In terms of audio you have AM, FM, DAB plus digital radio and a 6 speaker sound system
05:55 and then in terms of smartphone mirroring you have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
05:59 They're both wired so you'll need a cable to access those but I love this integration,
06:03 it's really high resolution and very quick as well.
06:06 I'll show you what that looks like with the maps too.
06:09 There it is there, all nice and easy and this is what Android Auto looks like, really high
06:14 resolution too, I like that and that all looks good as well.
06:18 Hey by the way, if you want to see a comparison between Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, click
06:22 up here.
06:23 It's a good one, gives you a bit of an insight into the differences between the two systems
06:26 plus we did some tests as well.
06:28 There is also a screen ahead of the driver that displays your trip computer and a couple
06:32 of the car's settings along with a digital speedometer.
06:35 Righto, let's talk safety.
06:36 So you have autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection.
06:40 Up here on the steering wheel you have a lane departure warning and a lane keeping assistant,
06:44 kind of steers on its own to stay within lane.
06:48 Doesn't really work that well, it often tries to steer when you're still within your lane
06:53 and it doesn't really deal well with construction zones either.
06:56 There is no radar cruise control or blind spot monitoring which is a little bit strange
07:00 but you do get a driver attention monitor.
07:02 Now you get rear parking sensors as well, let's have a look at what the reverse view
07:06 camera looks like.
07:08 There it is there, look the quality is not amazing but you do get guidelines to help
07:12 you with reversing.
07:13 Moving on to practicality and we'll kick off with connectivity, get rid of this cable for
07:17 the moment.
07:18 You have one USB port up the front and if you're using smartphone mirroring that is
07:22 going to be taken as soon as you plug that in and one 12 volt outlet.
07:25 There's no wireless phone charging but let's see where you can actually put your phone.
07:31 So your phone easily fits up on the top tray there, it's padded as well along with the
07:35 bottom tray.
07:36 You can also fit it inside cup holders if you want.
07:39 Speaking of cup holders, coffee, I know someone told me in the comments to get a man's size
07:43 coffee but it upsets my stomach so I have this.
07:47 In terms of the cup itself, fits in perfectly, no dramas there and then in terms of bottles,
07:52 let's have a look at our water bottle, fits in there, no dramas but no teeth so it moves
07:57 around a little bit and then inside the door you have plenty of room for water bottle storage
08:01 plus other odds and ends.
08:03 Centre console is pretty deep, so you can see how far down that goes, we'll see if that
08:07 closes, doesn't close but it does slide forward which is handy and then you have a glove box
08:12 which is predominantly taken up by the manual there but you can fit your water bottle in
08:17 if you need to.
08:18 And finally you have a sunglasses holder up the top here.
08:22 OK, what about comfort?
08:24 So these seats are interesting because they've got like this leather style stuff on the outside
08:28 and the inside is this fabric but it's got these cool lines throughout it with these
08:33 reflective portions up the top so it's a really nice design.
08:36 In terms of actual seat comfort, it's a nice place to be seated and then in terms of seat
08:41 adjustment it's all manual but the steering wheel sits nicely in the hand.
08:44 It's got a flat bottom as well and then a GT line badge on it and all of these controls
08:48 are easy to reach as well.
08:50 OK, second row.
08:52 Despite looking like an SUV there isn't a massive amount of leg room here, this is of
08:56 course based on the Rio platform so there's certainly so much you can extract from that.
09:01 That means my knees are sort of inside the seat there.
09:04 Keep in mind that I do normally have my seat quite far back so that explains part of that.
09:09 There's barely any toe room and head room is OK but not amazing.
09:14 There's no centre armrest here and you get the same seat design as the front row.
09:18 There's also no air vents back here either.
09:21 You do get ISOFIX points on the outboard seats, one map pocket and then a USB charging point
09:27 down the bottom.
09:28 You also have bottle storage inside the door as well if you need it but outside of that
09:34 it is pretty cramped back here.
09:35 OK, let's talk cargo space.
09:38 So manual tailgate, there's a little button under there.
09:40 You have a little over 350 litres available here and under the floor we have a space saver
09:46 spare tyre plus the jack.
09:48 A little bit of storage off to the side as well.
09:50 Let's see how it fits our bags.
09:52 That one tucks in nicely there, we'll try go long ways first.
09:57 Yep, if we swivel it around that fits in perfectly fine.
10:01 Now I'll show you what the space looks like with the second row folded.
10:05 Let me get rid of this cargo blind.
10:10 Comes out fairly easily and then what you can do is drop the second row from here and
10:14 away it goes and you have a little over 1100 litres of space.
10:18 So not a flat floor, it steps up just over here and it is a fairly high boot lip but
10:22 it's a generous amount of space for a tiny SUV like this.
10:27 OK, we have hit the road in the Kia Stonic.
10:32 Now powering this GT line is a new engine to the Stonic range so it is available with
10:38 a naturally aspirated four cylinder petrol engine but this one here is a one litre turbocharged
10:43 three cylinder petrol engine.
10:45 Makes 74 kilowatts of power and 172 newton metres of torque and that's mated to a seven
10:52 speed dual clutch transmission which sends torque directly to the front wheels.
10:58 Now I do want to point out one annoying thing with the Stonic.
11:01 I just noticed that sometimes the throttle pedal was just incredibly numb, it just wasn't
11:06 really doing anything and I realised it was in eco mode so I changed it into normal mode
11:10 and I'll run through the drive modes a little later on but the car defaults to eco mode
11:15 each time you start it for some reason.
11:18 It's absolutely bizarre and it's incredibly frustrating because it almost feels like it's
11:22 not getting fuel in eco mode, that's how much it cuts that throttle response and by the
11:26 way I did check the manual to see if you can actually remove eco as the default but it
11:31 doesn't look like you can.
11:32 Right so being a dual clutch, what does it all feel like?
11:37 I don't love it so it's just that it doesn't really pair well with this engine, it's quite
11:45 laggy at times and being a dual clutch it should be quick to rifle back through gears
11:50 but it just really isn't so I'll give you an example of what I mean, I'll just put the
11:52 foot down now, nothing nothing, everything.
11:55 It's like a huge delay before it does everything so I don't know, it just doesn't really
12:01 feel good with this three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine.
12:04 I would have loved to just see a normal torque converter mated to this engine, inherently
12:08 three-cylinder especially when it is turbocharged just needs a little bit of get up and go and
12:13 when it's mated to this dual clutch it's just really laggy sometimes but how does that feel
12:18 once you actually get stuck into it, let's give it a little punch here.
12:22 Look once it's moving it's actually okay, pushes you back into the seat nicely, three-cylinder
12:27 engines have this inherent rumble to them and this has that, it sounds really cool when
12:32 you get up it so from that point of view it's good, it's just low speed stuff, it just really
12:37 isn't amazing and then in that eco mode it is just so dull and lifeless.
12:41 Kia claims a combined fuel economy of 5.4 litres per 100 kilometres, let's have a little
12:46 sticky beak here, we're averaging 6.6 which is not too bad when you consider I guess this
12:52 being an SUV that fuel economy is actually not that terrible, we've done a mix of city
12:56 driving and also a little bit of highway driving as well.
12:59 The other part of the package that helps save fuel is a stop start system, I'll show you
13:03 how that works, so you pull up, comes up with a little symbol saying stop start.
13:07 Now inherently a three-cylinder engine is slightly out of balance and you can feel that
13:12 when it switches off because when it kills fuel it sort of has a little shimmy before
13:17 it shuts down so not the end of the world but it is something that you do notice every
13:21 now and then.
13:22 Let's talk drive modes, so yes you have the eco mode that it defaults to, you have a normal
13:26 mode and you also have a sport mode.
13:29 So in the sport mode the steering becomes heavier, the throttle response becomes sharper
13:34 as well and if I get stuck into it now, yeah I can immediately feel it's ready and eager
13:40 to pick up and move there.
13:41 It's also holding gears, I can see there that it's holding third for me and in terms of
13:45 handling you don't expect something like this to really handle that well but it's pretty
13:50 surprising, it sits nice and flat through corners, the steering has enough feel through
13:55 it and it communicates nicely, it gives you the impression that it is much sportier than
13:59 it actually looks.
14:00 Kia doesn't give us an official 0-100km/h time for the Stonic but I thought we'd put
14:06 it up against a stopwatch anyway.
14:20 So we're just out on a country road now and you may have noticed my voice is a little
14:23 bit louder now, there is a lot of road noise in the cabin.
14:26 You're getting it from the tyres but it also doesn't feel like there's a great deal of
14:30 insulation so it's coming in through the sides as cars go past.
14:34 Yes this is a course chipped country road but it would have been nice to see a little
14:37 bit more noise insulation here because it is quite droney inside the cabin.
14:43 Let's talk about ride, so Kia has done an Australian ride and handling tune for the
14:48 Stonic.
14:49 Now generally what they do and I noticed this with the Cerato GT line as well, they
14:54 tune it to be sporty for some reason.
14:56 So it is still comfortable but it's on the firmer side of comfortable and that means
15:01 you'll notice as you're going through the city, potholes, cobblestones, speed humps,
15:07 they can be a little harsh, especially in comparison to something like Yaris Cross which
15:11 is really nice and smooth and softly tuned, this is on the sportier side.
15:16 So keep that in mind and like I always say, 24 hour test drive because if you find this
15:21 is too firm, you're probably going to want to step back through the range so you're not
15:25 in a GT line.
15:26 What about visibility?
15:28 It shares a platform with the Rio which means visibility is actually pretty good.
15:31 I can see down the front of the car.
15:33 Rearward visibility is not too bad, the window, it's kind of like a narrow envelope but it's
15:39 not terrible and the wing mirrors are big enough to see down the side of the car.
15:42 It's just disappointing that there's no blind spot monitor there.
15:45 Okay so Kia Stonic, what do we think?
15:47 I don't know, I thought I was really going to enjoy this car but I came away a little
15:52 underwhelmed.
15:53 So the engine and gearbox combination, I just don't know that they gel all that well together
15:58 and it's also missing a couple of basic features like no blind spot monitoring, there's no
16:02 radar cruise control which is available in some of the competitors in this segment and
16:06 I think that it just feels a little underdone inside as well.
16:10 But if you put all those things to the side, Kia is currently doing drive away pricing
16:14 in Australia and it makes it fairly competitive in comparison to its peers.
16:18 It's incredibly fuel efficient and I guess sporty in the sense that if you get up it
16:23 you can actually have a little bit of fun with it with that slightly firmer ride.
16:26 So let me know what you think in the comments section below.
16:28 I think I've put Kia up on a pedestal with cars like Sorento and Carnival and that's
16:33 possibly why I feel a little sort of underwhelmed with this but really keen to get your feedback.
16:38 Have you bought one?
16:39 What's it like?
16:40 Is the engine fun to live with?
16:42 Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
16:44 Now if you did enjoy this video make sure you share it and hit the like button and if
16:47 you haven't done so already don't forget to hit subscribe and also the bell icon.
16:51 But until next time, take it easy.