Maybe the Kia Borrego is just the car for its eponymous California desert town -- Borrego Springs, in a remote northeast section of San Diego County.
"Borrego Springs is a village within a park completely surrounded and protected by the amazing 600,000 acre Anza-Borrego Desert State Park," the town's Chamber of Commerce and Visitor's Bureau says on its Web site. "Here in San Diego's only desert community, the nearest stoplight is fifty miles away. We have no big box or chain stores. The slower, uncomplicated pace, the scenic beauty and the human scale of the place combine to produce a rustic, authentic desert experience, a special place, in all seasons."
Just the place to have a slightly antiquated, boxy, upright, solid SUV whose time may have gone by. Not that we went to Borrego Springs to try out the Borrego. But we traveled vicariously, through the wonders of the Web.
The point about comparing the desert town to this biggish SUV is that, while Borrego Springs may seem out of whack in time it does so in a charming and inoffensive way -- we like having a town out there in the middle of almost nowhere, west of the Salton Sea and east of the moon. It's comforting. It's safe.
But do we like having an SUV whose time may be past? The big Kia, based, as it is, on a truck platform, has many of the ills associated with riding in a truck -- there is that wallowing feel you sometimes get on rough roads; it's high off the ground (the running boards help); and it has that rough, almost mannish manner about it that says it is no namby-pamby station wagon.
All well and good, except, well.... things have advanced in the auto world and the one thing that is fairly obvious is that crossover utility vehicles offer about the same amenities and hauling capacities as the Borrego, but your backside does not get beat up during that 15-mile trip to that shopping mall across the county.
The point is that for roughly the same money (our test model started life at about $30,000 and stickered at more than $36,000, when optioned up) you could get one of the terrific General Motors clan of crossovers, typifed by the GMC Acadia or Buick Enclave.
Those two, while getting roughly the same fuel mileage (the Kia and the GM variants all hover in the 16/22 mpg area) are vastly better riding and just feel and look classier.
The Borrego has two power trains available -- a 3.8-liter, 276-horse V6, and a 4.6-liter 337-horsepower V8 -- and also comes in two-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive. We had the V6 AWD version and it had plenty of power for the normal urban and suburban crawl. Interestingly, the fuel mileage on the V6 is only one mpg better than the V8, which would make me (a power-hungry chap) err on the side of the bigger motor.
The Borrego, on the plus side (if this is a plus) has the same muscular feel to its looks as Acura's MDX or Nissan's Armada -- it's that big, bruising, hulking mien -- and it makes you feel invincible up there on the freeway, cruising past all the small fry to port or starboard.
There is one little weird detail that I couldn't figure out: in the instrument panel, the water temperature gauge looked like every standard gauge, with one exception. The "H" was on the left and the "C" was no the right. Huh? Normally, you watch the needle going from left to right, starting with Cold on the left. In the Kia, it was backwards. A quirk by a designer? something for the U.K. market? Who knows?
So... is this an attractive buy in the SUV pantheon? Depends on how you like your trucks. If you like trucks that say they are trucks and not some wimpy wagon, then go ahead. But if you'd like a smoother ride, with the same cargo space and modern amenities, I'd go for something newer.
SPECIFICATIONS
2009 Kia Borrego, five-door all-wheel-drive SUV.
Price: test model, $36,295. (base price $29,995)
Powertrain: 3.8-liter V6 276-horsepower engine; five-speed automatic transmission
Curb weight: 4,460 pounds.
Seating capacity: seven.
Fuel consumption : 16 mpg, city; 21 mpg, highway.
Fuel tank capacity: 20.6 gallons.
Length: 192.1 inches; width: 75.4 inches; height: 71.3 inches; wheelbase: 114 inches.
Warranty: bumper to bumper: five years/60,000 miles; power train: ten years/100,000 miles.
Dependability: Kia ranks 27th (below industry average) out of 37 brands on the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Vehicle Dependability Study.
Safety: for vehicle safety ratings, visit the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Source: Kia Motors; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
SFGate.com
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