Driven: Kia Rio

There is little doubt that the Kia Rio is an excellent new supermini. It continues the Korean firm’s transformation from budget brand to company that should be genuinely taken very seriously. It looks great, drives well enough, and the pick of the engines is the surprisingly lively three-cylinder 1.1-litre diesel that, on paper at least, offers 80+mpg. All good then… so why do I feel a bit disappointed by the car? I think it’s the interior. I was hoping for more. I was hoping it would continue the standard set by the Cee’d, and then bettered by the Soul, Sportage, Sorento and Picanto, but I don’t think it does. The reason is the toggle switches you can see in the picture above, just below the three round ventilation knobs. I’ve seen this photo a few times since it was released earlier in the year and hadn’t picked them out as something of concern, but in reality they are big and ugly and pointless. They don’t really fit with the rest of the dashboard design. I’m writing this in my Portuguese hotel room, having chatted last night to Kia’s design director Peter Schreyer. He said the toggles were a deliberate attempt to move away from a flush-fitting, soft-touch, integrated cabin design, and that he will be using them again on future cars. I think they might have better suited to the Sportage or Sorento – altogether chunkier cars – rather than the Rio. But hey, it’s just an opinion.

Van-tastic

There must be a degree of a frustration when the sector your vehicle sells in is defined by the opposition. The Vauxhall Vivaro is a perfectly good van, but if I wanted to describe it to you any further I would say it is Transit-sized. And you would know exactly what I mean. It’s got three seats across the front, is driven by tradesmen the nation over and has a utilitarian dashboard with plenty of room at the base of the windscreen for a copy of The Sun. I don’t drive vans very often, but I borrowed this one from Vauxhall for a group of 10 of us to transport our camping gear to a music festival. It proved perfect for the task, in part because we could get one of those large trollies you see at garden centres into the back to help move our stuff at the other end. (I should say we didn’t steal the trolley, one of our number runs a nursery). The main issue when driving one is the lack of visibility when reversing; sure, there are door mirrors but it’s amazing how little use they are when you’re the size of a Transit – sorry, Vivaro – and have no rear view mirror. Ironically it had an optional extra called the Vision Pack (£100). Not sure what benefit that brought.

The most influential interior ever?

Spent the last couple of days immersed in the world of the Jaguar XF for a buyer’s guide that I’m writing. One of the more interesting bits was a chat with a main dealer who said it was the interior of the car that really wowed potential buyers. It’s not just that it remains a sophisticated reinterpretation of a Jag cabin (pictured), but what the dealer referred to as the ‘Jaguar handshake’. By that he means the active elements of the ignition process, which are the pulsing red ‘heartbeat’ on the starter button, the rotating dashboard air vents and the rising round gear selector. In his opinion, it was those which had helped redefine modern Jaguars and brought a new and younger type of customer into the brand, people who would never have considered one before. Up to a point he’s right. The exterior design, such a departure from the S-Type, also helped. But it got me thinking about other examples of where a new style of cabin had sparked such a transformation in public thinking about a brand. And I couldn’t think of a single one.

Light fantastic? Er, no

Just had my first experience of headlights that automatically swap between main and dipped beam, a feature on the 2012 model year Jaguar XF (pictured). You might wonder why I’ve not come across this before, and the reason is that on launch events – unless you get seriously lost – you never drive at night. Me and the Jag had an eight-mile trip down the A14 dual carriageway at about 11pm on Sunday night and the auto-function kicked in. Sensors scan the road ahead for movement and light, and if they find none they switch to main beam. As soon as they spot something coming the other way, or a vehicle overtakes you, they select dipped. Clearly it’s very clever, but actually I have to say I didn’t really like it. It must have flicked between the two options 30 times in the space of those eight miles, and sometimes staying on one for just a couple of seconds before switching back. Had I been controlling it myself I doubt I would have been close to half that number. The theory is it will help road safety by improving the driver’s vision, and maybe you get used to it, but I found it quite irritating. It’s a feature I could live without.

My wife's car of the year

It’s awards season in the motoring world, and it seems there’s a new set of gongs being handed out on pretty much a daily basis. I’m not going to burden you will my personal honours – I’m not pretentious enough to think anyone cares that much about my views, and if you read this blog regularly you will know my thoughts on the latest good and bad cars – but I will pay tribute to the VW Golf Cabriolet. It has achieved what most of the test cars that come to and go from my Suffolk driveway fail to do… and that’s get the nod of approval from Mrs Y. I’ve been busy writing at home all week and as it’s school holidays she’s been running around in the Golf – roof up and down – with the kids. There is no greater seal of approval for a new car than her broad smile and the words “I really like that car, what is it?”. Her face turned rather sour when I dropped the bombshell that it was £27,000 and she wouldn’t be getting it for her 40^th birthday next year. The good news is I’m off to drive it this morning. If I think she’s right about the Golf Cabriolet I might start sending her on launches…

The road to hell

I will do pretty much anything to avoid spending time on the M25, mainly because however long I leave to complete that section of the journey, it’s always way short of the mark. Friday night was a case in point; got stuck through the roadworks going from the A12 junction down to the Dartford Crossing. What should be about 20 minutes maximum took more than twice that. There was no obvious problem or reason for the delay. Coming back the same way yesterday, I witnessed first hand how one person’s idiotic and selfish driving can cause these so-called ‘phantom jams’. A VW Golf GTI came down the slip-road on to the motorway at a ridiculously fast speed, cutting across the white hatching to head through too-small gaps to get to the outside lane. I was probably eight cars back but everybody in front of me instinctively stood on the middle pedal because of this one reckless individual. We all bunched up, we all came to a virtual standstill and for no real reason. This Mexican Wave of red lights spread back and suddenly what was a perfectly happy snake of drivers became a traffic jam. Brilliant. Some people don’t deserve a driving licence.

A worthy winner

Went to the Auto Express awards on Tuesday night to see the Range Rover Evoque crowned Car of the Year. It’s a mould-breaking model for the company and for the SUV sector generally, and that’s always a points-scorer with the magazine’s judges. I drove the car (pictured, above) last week and it’s an excellent machine. I was most impressed by the interior space; the dropping roof/rising waist combination tricks the eye into thinking it will be tight in the back, but actually it’s not. There seemed to be general agreement that the Evoque was a worthy winner amongst the industry VIPs present. One of them was Nick Reilly, on hand to be inducted into the Auto Express Hall of Fame. That was another popular honour; Reilly was MD of Vauxhall when I started out in this game, and has since risen through the General Motors ranks to be president of European operations. Nobody has done more to secure the future of the car industry in the UK than Reilly, helping transform Ellesmere Port into a state-of-the-art operation and promoting Luton’s van plant where the Vauxhall Vivaro is built.

VW Sharan makes ideal camping car

Been away camping for a few days with the family and Volkswagen kindly loaned me a new Sharan for the trip. As a seven-seater it would be too big for us as a regular family car – it’s me, my wife and two kids most of the time – but it proved its worth over the weekend. With the third row of chairs folded flat the people carrier swallowed all the camping kit, and when we met up with grandparents on a day out, I reconfigured it in seconds and it was ideal transport for the six of us. It also impressed a friend of mine who was part of our multi-family trip. He’s also got a wife and two little ones, but works as a photographer and needs space for all his camera kit. He was very impressed with the flexibility of the Sharan’s interior, and also the little ‘attention to detail’ things. He was genuinely impressed with how the second row seat base tilts to allow it to slide further forward to create better access to the third row (pictured, above). I think he might be visiting a VW dealer very soon to trade in his ageing Peugeot estate!