And then there were two, er, one (part 2 of 2); Korea, Kia and its new little big car, the Amanti.(News)(Product/Service Evaluation)

Hitting the Marks

Most Americans think of Kia as a maker of low-priced, entry-level vehicles, but the company has been building premium sedans for its domestic market for more than a decade, with 126,000 units turned out to date. It's with this experience that Kia decided to finally introduce the Amanti (known overseas as the Opirus) to these shores.

Based on an enlarged Hyundai XG350 platform, the Amanti comes equipped with a 3.5-liter dohc V6 and five-speed automatic transmission with a manual shift mode. Output tops out at 200 hp at 5500 rpm and 220 lb-ft of torque at 3500 rpm. But given the Amanti's 4021-pound curb weight, the car hardly moves off the line or over the road with much authority, even with 90 percent of torque available between 2000 rpm and 5000 rpm.

Like most cars of its ilk, the Amanti feels fairly soft over the road, with its double-wishbone front and multilink-rear suspension doing decent duty keeping the ride comfortable, if far from performance-oriented. Most impressive, perhaps, is how quiet the ride remains even as you approach highway speeds. "Affordable'' cars can often suffer from a higher interior noise level.

Kia says it is targeting the Avalon with the Amanti, and both vehicles' numbers stack up pretty well. The Amanti is bigger all around, at 72.8 inches wide (vs. Avalon at 71.7) with a 61.8-inch front track and 61.4-inch rear (vs. 61.0/60.0), 196 inches in length (vs. 191.9) over a 110.2-inch wheelbase (vs. 107.1) and 58.5 inches in height (vs. 57.1).

The same goes for inside the vehicle, where Amanti passengers enjoy more headroom (40.0/38.4-inch front/rear vs. Avalon's 38.7/37.9) and legroom (43.7/37.2-inch front/rear vs. 41.7/40.1). Only the trunk is smaller, with 15.5 cubic feet of golf club space vs. the Avalon's 15.9.

The Avalon barely takes the Amanti in the power department, with its 3.0-liter V6 cranking out 210 hp at 5800 rpm and 220 lb-ft at 4400 rpm, but with a substantially lower curb weight (3417 pounds), the Avalon should pull off the line quicker than the Korean car.