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Being quick and wily as a coyote is Kia's new Forte
By John Gilbert Last Updated: Friday, June 19th, 2009 02:29:07 PM SEATTLE, WASH. --- It's not a bad name -- "Forte." Kia has bestowed that name on its new compact sedan, which replaces the Spectra. I would have suggested "Coyote" as being more appropriate after having the chance to drive of the new car beyond Seattle and into northern Washington State to mingle with some wildlife. There are altogether too many names, numbers, letters, and code-cute combinations being used to identify cars these days, and Kia is not the least guilty, by coming out with an impressive stream of new cars. The Soul is a good one, introduced just a few months ago by Kia. The Forte stands out as a compact sedan, even while aimed directly at the highly successful Honda Civic/Mazda3/Toyota Corolla/Nissan Sentra/Mitsubishi Lancer segment. You could argue that the Civic, Mazda3 and Lancer are the best styled of those, but you'd have to now include the new Forte right with them, because it comes in at the top of just about all categories worth measuring, including style. If you had to choose, the wedgy silhouette and front end of the Forte have a few similarities with the Civic, which reset some style standards in its 2006 redesign. My reasoning for the Coyota name isn't without thought. If you recall, the recently introduced Soul, a neat little boxy compact that has caught on with the car-buying public, was featured in a couple of slick television ads that showed a family of cartoon hamsters bopping along in their Soul. They stopped at a traffic light, bobbing their heads to keep time with the catchy tune on the available advanced sound system, and then they drove away from various other mundane vehicles, also driven by hamsters, but on mini-treadmills indicating their less-colorful cars could only spin their wheels. Great ad, and it called strong attention to the car. At the Forte introduction, vice president of Kia marketing Michael Sprague elicited a small groan from some journalists, including this one, when he said: "No more hamsters." Sprague went on to alleviate most of our concerns by pointing out that since the Forte combines so many upper-class features in a lower-cost economy vehicle, some new "combination" animals are being invented for promotion use. There is the peacock/turtle, which is both stylish and extremely stable, and a cheetah/camel, both fast and agile, and fuel-efficient. "Those animals would be one of a kind, if they existed," said Sprague, meaning the Forte is one of a kind for combining all its features in an economy compact, while delivering on all counts. Driving away from Seattle, we took a ferry boat across to Whidby Island, where we drove on to lunch. Later, we hit a homemade ice cream shop -- ginger snap-caramel, with the ice cream, the ginger and the caramel all homemade. The Forte proved solid, snappy, roomy enough, and pleasantly agile. My co-driver, Josee Valcourt from New York, is fairly new at the auto review game, and she didn't feel comfortable with a stick shift. So we drove both the top-of-the-line SX automatic, loaded with every feature including the 2.4-liter four, for $17,900, and the base LX ($14,390), with the base 2.0-liter four, and without most options as the bargain leader. The LX we drove had the economy package, which lifts you from the base 4-speed automatic to a few streamlining features and the 5-speed automatic, which has better gearing for optimum mileage. We didn't have time to get into the mid-range EX, which is priced at $16,490. We were all challenged to take the little souvenir digital camera Kia provided us and submit one photo per team to a contest by trying to portray ourselves, the car, and something that identified the area. Since Whidby Island mostly resembles driving through Minnesota or Wisconsin once you get away from the ferry view of the harbor, we waited until we returned, then I snapped a shot of Josee sitting on the trunklid of our white Forte, with the Space Needle in the background. We finished runner-up, much to our delight. Ironically, my greatest appreciation of the Forte came after the presentation. I had arranged to try a car for the following few days, and I took off in a "coppertone" SX Forte with the 2.4 and a 6-speed stick shift. I drove north on Interstate-5 to Bellingham, Wash., in an hour and a half while sticking to the 70-mph speed limit. The car attained 32.4 miles per gallon on that trip. Meeting up in Bellingham with my wife, Joan, and our son, Jeff, we gathered with a number of Jeff's friends to watch the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals that night, but not until I loaded Joan, Jeff, and Jeff's girlfriend into the Forte and we drove up to Mount Baker. The magnificent mountain that attracts the greatest snowfall in the country, I'm told, is one of that series of regional active volcano peaks, along with Mounts Ranier, Hood, and St. Helen's. We realized it was still winter up there when the road suddenly came to a wall of glacial-melt snow that blocked the road ahead. No matter, the road up through the foothills is possibly my favorite drive on the North American continent -- twisting and curving but smooth, predictable and not dangerous. With four adults on board, I had a great time driving the Forte as though it were a sports car, rather than an economy compact sedan, always staying flat and precisely carving the line myh I had prescribed through the steering wheel. On the way back down, I was sashaying around the same curves, enjoying the handling that meets public relations director Alex Fedoruk's proclamation that Kia engineers had met that elusive compromise of flat and stable cornering but with a suspension set-up (MacPherson struts up front, torsion beam rear) that is never harsh over rough roads. It was right about then, when I came zipping around a tight right-hand curve on this mountain road, that an object crossed the road. At first I thought it might be a deer, or a dog, but then I realized it was a coyote. Fascinating. I stopped abruptly (the brakes work well, too), and there we were, properly in the right lane, looking eye-to-eye with the coyote, while blocking his return path from the guardrail to the woods. He started jogging forward, and I accelerated along with him, grabbing my camera and one-handing a couple of shots out the driver's window as he galloped alongside us at 30 mph. He accelerated ahead of us and cut in front of us, and we continued to pace him until he had an easy exit into the woods.
Much as I was impressed with the Forte on that drive, I keep thinking how the Forte was as quick and agile as that wily coyote. For a company that has made such great promotional use of hamsters, and now turtles, peacocks, cheetahs and camels, "Coyote" would be the perfect monicker for this car. The Kia Spectra is a good little car, a core vehicle with style and performance, but Kia decided that since the Soul started the company on a new direction, changing the name of the Spectra to Forte would be another step in the new direction. The Forte uses a lot of high-strength steel in its construction, no doubt helping the stability I noted. The center pillar completes a ring around the whole perimeter of the car, through the frame and roof, and using high-strength steel means the car is only 10 pounds heavier than the departing Spectra. The design, with its wedge-like front, earns a 0.29 coefficient of drag. Interior room is what Kia calls "class leading." So are the features. Stability control, traction control, adaptive headrests, six airbags, a driver-oriented cockpit, room for five, plus a wide stance and comparatively long wheelbase help the car's utility and stability. Four-wheel disc brakes with electronic brake distribution, and good punch from both engines make the Forte a strong performer no matter which engine you choose. The 2.0 has 156 horsepower and 144 foot-pounds of torque, while the 2.4 has 173 horsepower and 168 foot-pounds of torque. The engines are from what Kia calls the "global" shared design of Hyundai, Mitsubishi and Chrysler. That family started as Hyundai, Mitsubishi and Chrysler, but Kia was able to join in, because in Korea, Hyundai offers technical oversight and powertrains to its Korean cousin, even though the two compete in the U.S. A sports package adds a firmer sport suspension, larger (11.8-inch) front disc brakes, 17-inch wheels, and foglights. All Forte models have AM-FM-CD-MP3 players, with Sirius satellite radio standard, and with USB and auxilliary audio plug-ins, and standard solar glass inb the windshield and two front side windows. Little things like dual power outlets, seat height adjusters, a soft-damped glove box door, and a cargo net to keep groceries from slip-sliding in the trunk, are things you might not expect from an economy compact. But the Forte has already proven to be more than anticipated. At market research tests, Kia set out a Civic, Corolla, Mazda3, and a Forte, and covered the name badges. The people usually picked the Forte No. 1. Kia officials were not surprised, nor dismayed, doing the same test with previous cars, when the names were unveiled, and the Kia dropped in favor. But with the Forte, Sprague said, the car stayed No. 1, even when people were made aware that it was not their usual mainstream Honda or Toyota. There is already more to come. Kia will follow up the Forte sedan with the Forte Koup -- a sleek two-door coupe -- later this summer. I'm not sure if "Koup" works for me...They could still name it "Coyote." |
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