Gadgetory

first things first let's take a little bit pause get used to the concept of a phrase you probably never thought you hear a $66,000 PM we drive the 2015 all-new Kia k900 the flagship check the deck now I think you'll agree with me I'm seeing a lot of jag XJ and XF in the vehicles face and even in its side view and rear 3/4 which is not a bad benchmark but kind of an odd one overall the design is not audacious daring or cutting any new direction for sure I will point out one thing though you do get standard LED headlights which remain pretty exotic if you get one of the v8 cars let's get inside and of course the Kingdom and Hunter will be a non-starter if it wasn't basically LCD everywhere 9 inch screen up here in the centre stack great big 12.3 LCD instrument right in front of me the LCD IP however is part of a special VIP package you don't get that on every single one of these and something new for kia their first HUD their first head-up display out there which looks pretty good it'll give you speed your next navin as well as blind spot lane departure indications things like that now let's go to the head unit first of all let's start with our media sources nothing too surprising here all the things you want like satellite radio HD radio broadcast radio USB aux jack things of that nature it's all here bluetooth streaming also it does a pretty good job of bringing you the information about the source you're listening to and doing it in a way that is very digestible by the way this is not a touch head unit it's voice or knob only but touching the screen will get you nowhere oh note this when you're on satellite radio you've got a pause play in this as well something we saw in GM cars a few years ago there's no haptic feedback on this controller says click click click there's no handwriting recognition on there like some of the recent outies navigation screen quality is very good tight dot pitch good labeling everything is quite readable entering destinations is not difficult at all by all the usual ways that you would do so and of course as I mentioned by voice 235 second Street San Francisco please one quick and painless easy to enter an address via voice and it seems pretty good about recognizing them that said there is no live navigation search to destination or open search on here apps in this car are nothing to write home about they include Yelp support and more importantly Pandora but the latter oddly enough only on iOS devices and only by a cable so let's go to the UVO services this is their idea of a connected telematics base it's not that impressive though it's basically OnStar on a little bit of steroids maybe you've got roadside assistance vehicle diagnostics and repair information the parking minder is fairly interesting let's say I just parked the car I push this button and it's now connecting to the U of L app that's running on my phone and it just sent this cars location to the phone I can also go there and set up a timer to remind me when the parking here runs out my Pio eyes lets you send Pio eyes from the internet from Google Maps let's say so that they're ready right here in the car but again I don't like to maintain two basis of anything media destinations I've already gone on my destinations on my phone in my cloud services I don't need to repopulate a set in my car so this to me feels dated already now of course car like this was a backup camera on sensors on the bumpers but notice what we have here also because we've got this guy trimmed up all the way you hear all my sensors going live you can see that I'm getting graphical indication on this overview map a surround camera as well as many other views I can select down here and they're very easy to get to this is one of the better layouts and actual expressions of multi camera surround view out there now the k900 boosts standard heated rear seats with access to HVAC controls a power sunshade and some panoramic roof it stretches back there if you get the VIP package you also get reclining back seats cooled rear seats and a bunch of other niceties in this case they're benchmarking the Lexus LS blessedly they don't have any dumb DVD rear seat entertainment system standard or optional I approve now here in the engine bay is where you can clearly realize that Kia understands you enter a category like this of two luxury cars by first establishing your baseline bona fides this engine is a good example you start off with big displacement no trickery five liter v8 no turbo no supercharger mounted longitudinally in the engine bay driving those the numbers are pretty impressive 420 horsepower 376 pound-feet of torque 0-60 happens in a spritely five and a half seconds consuming this car weighs over 4,500 pounds before you get in it and the mpg is not bad at 1523 no all-wheel drive variant is offered yet though you can see that being perhaps a market necessity down the road now all that power comes back into the car through a single choice 8-speed automatic transmission with this shifter here that is rather BMW like the top three gears are overdrive by the way so in a sense it's a five-speed for actual involve driving you've got three drive modes you've got eco normal and sport and you can tell from a little info graphic up here that eco handles drivetrain tails it back normal is gonna put you in your baseline mode sport is going to amp up the response of the powertrain the shift points as well but also change a little bit of the assist on the electric hydraulic steering rack none of this though affects the suspension this car does not have an adaptive suspension sport mode also puts you into a different gauge cluster up here that I don't find this very interesting I don't need both a dial indication of my tach as well as a readout of the RPM it's kind of just silly interestingly when you're in sport mode this car doesn't have a real sporty interface on the controls you do have the ability to shift over here but this shifters kind of kind of fiddly in a way and then there are no paddles on the wheel either so getting this car in sport mode doesn't get you far down the road to sport ok under way you find out right away this vehicle is aimed at Lexus LS more than anything else that's my estimation because it doesn't have the sharp sort of broad enos sort of Jacques in the three-piece suit kind of DNN you find in BMWs and Audi's fairly often it's even different than a Mercedes this is definitely a lexus LS field vehicle for example the power is substantial you've got plenty of but it's a little bit sleepy you've done a unbundle a lot of gears no matter what mode to get that power to deliver once you do you really want to shift this thing and as I mentioned you don't have any paddles so it's even harder to tap into the goodness of this super silky be enemies the smoothest riding most comfortable cars I've driven there is not a note of imprecision to it but I want more guts sport mode helps of course but it's not dramatically different the ride quality as I said is so unbelievably buttery it's very impressive on the other hand it's got a certain amount of this a certain amount of gels in it that is not going to please everybody and a bit of a bit of body roll to it that I wasn't really expecting however when you dive into a corner on a twisty road it doesn't plow the front end I've done a nice job with the front end geometry so it doesn't have this big sliding sloppy oversteer but we are just floating along here yeah like riding on a big puffy cloud okay let's price RK 900 with the caveat that when you're in this class of car there is no right answer whether it's worth the money or not because a lot of what's going on in these kinds of vehicles is image and prestige and that's a personal call that said here are the numbers sixty thousand four hundred delivered for a v8 car which is pretty well loaded there's only one thing you'll add to the sheet to take it fully CNET's down that's the VIP package here's what it includes it bumps up a rear camera to include those surround cameras you get adaptive cruise control to go with the blind spot and lane departure tech the instrument panel goes from gauges to LCD as we saw in this car you also get Kia's first-ever head-up display and you get more seat adjustability as well including a big bump in the rear seats which includes the reclining the power lumbar the active cooling ventilation to go with the standard heating back they're all in about 66 for who knew a Kia would ever go there and do so pretty successfully