Lots of little things go
into making a car great or terrible, but none of them really matter if the car
is no fun to drive or if it's uncomfortable from behind the wheel. To test the Kia Cadenza's
worth, we decided to take the car on a few short road trips.
Road Trip!
From AutoTrader's home base
in Atlanta, we ventured north and discovered some of the best roads on this
side of the Rockies. Unlike cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Miami,
Atlanta is the kind of place where you can travel from the heart of urban life
to a rural country road in about 20 minutes.
As we headed away from the
city, we left the main highway and opted for medium-sized roads through North
Georgia towns including Milton, Free Home, Dawsonville and eventually, Helen.
These roads aren't
70-mile-per-hour freeways, but rather 35 to 55 mph side roads; some are
straight, some have lazy turns and a few have very tight turns.
Juuust Right
At the end of all these little
day trips we came to one conclusion about the Kia Cadenza: The car feels right
in almost every driving situation. The Cadenza's 293-horsepower 3.3-liter V6
engine is smooth and plentiful. If you stomp hard on the gas pedal, there's a
bit of a harsh sound, but the power is delivered so efficiently and the
transmission adapts so well that you rarely need to punch the gas pedal to the
floor.
The Cadenza doesn't feel like the
kind of car where you'd want to punch it at all. Don't get me wrong, the car
will go, it's just that it feels more comfortable cruising. I like that there's
plenty of power and that the car feels like acceleration is coming from a place
of abundance, not that the engine is tapped out whenever you want to pass a
huge truck or have fun on an on-ramp.
Handling is decent, too.
Again, it's not a sport sedan, but rather a nice blending of comfort and sport
with an obvious bias toward comfort.
Cold-Beating Features
No one thinks of Georgia as
a cold place, but temperatures can easily dip below freezing in the winter, and
the occasional snow storm isn't unheard of. With temps in the high 20s, I fired
up the heated steering wheel, a nice feature on any car. It stays on even when
you turn the car off and then get back in later and start it up. But what's odd
is that the heated seats don't do that. Our managing editor (and avid user of
seat warmers) was the first to point out that during a long, cold day of
running errands, having to turn the seat warmers on each time you turn the car
back on is kind of a pain.
Nevertheless, the Cadenza gets the interior just
right. It's a pleasant place to spend time, being both comfortable and
constructed from high-quality materials. We're big fans of the large
touchscreen, too, which is about as good as Chrysler's excellent Uconnect
system.
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