2004 Spectra Still Being Sold Alongside Redesigned 2004.5 Model, But Doesn't Even Compare
Written: Mar 26 '04 (Updated Aug 12 '04)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Rock-bottom prices, fantastic warranty.
Cons: Rock-bottom quality: awful shifter, vague handling, boomy engine, quivery structure, cheap and dreary interior.
The Bottom Line: The outgoing 2004 Spectra feels like a ten-year-old car, and not a very good one. You'll find the same reasonable pricing and great warranty on the far-superior 2004.5 Spectra.
|
|
|
| drive571's Full Review: 2004 Kia Spectra Hatchback |
My Experience
I drove a 2004 Kia Spectra GS 5-speed back-to-back with the redesigned 2004.5 model at a local dealership. My test drive lasted about forty-five minutes and covered city streets, the freeway, and winding secondary roads.
Performance
On my test-drive, it didn't take more than a couple minutes to see why has Kia dumped this car's engine in favor of a Hyundai unit for the redesigned Spectra. The reason is that the outgoing Spectra's 1.8-liter four is simply one of the most ragged, unrefined engines on the new-car market, rivaled only by the one in Kia's own Rio for unpleasantness.
When I turned the key to start the Spectra, the engine clanked as it turned over, and then settled into a grumbly, ill-tempered idle that shook the cabin with vibrations. Its shaking smoothed out a bit in the gentle revving of city travel, but acceleration was accompanied by a coarse, agricultural groaning, and every time I stopped at a red light, the buzzing came back.
The one good thing I can say about this Spectra's engine is that it provides surprisingly decent acceleration. Around town, there was enough power to step away from stoplights confidently, and it felt stronger at the low end than many four-cylinders (for example, the one in the Honda Civic). On freeway on-ramps, the Spectra's engine built up revs too slowly for my tastes, but the car accelerated up to speed promptly, even delivering a slight hint of that "push-in-the-back" feeling in the process.
I actually found this accelerative adequacy rather impressive--but then again, how often are you going to be willing to take advantage of this when every aggressive throttle application is accompanied by a loud, boomy, groan from under the hood? After running the Spectra up to speed and merging on the freeway, I certainly wasn't eager to do it again. But at least the old Spectra can take comfort in its class-competitive acceleration times, even if achieving them isn't nearly as fun as it could be.
Transmission/Clutch
Now that I've driven the new Spectra, I can say with newfound certainty that the outgoing Spectra's manual transmission is indeed the worst in its class--by a significant margin. Its throws are unnecessarily long, and the lever moves in vague, sloppy arcs across the pattern. The gates for each gear aren't well-defined, so finding the gears can be tricky even though they're very widely spaced--the long crossbar makes the 2-3 and 4-5 shift especially laborious. Even when you do get used to the long-winded pattern and start finding the correct gates, the shifter has a loose and rubbery feel going into each gear. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but the old Spectra's shifter really is one of the only shifters on the market that's bad enough to make you miss shifts on a regular basis.
The Spectra's clutch is less hideous, but still pretty unsatisfying--it has a short throw, but a vague engagement point that made it difficult to avoid slurring your shifts. I haven't driven a Spectra with an automatic, but I can't imagine it would be worse than this, meaning the car is probably better with the slushbox--a disappointment to manual-transmission fans, but possibly good news for most buyers.
Steering/Handling
Even the new 2004.5 Spectra's handling is well below that of the class leaders, but driving this early-2004 model reminded me that it used to be much worse.
Like the 2004.5 model, steering feel is the weakest link, but in this car, the problem is much more pronounced. Effort is fairly high--a quality I normally appreciate--but virtually no road feel makes its way up through the wheel rim, making the steering feel dead, wooden, and heavy. Turn-in is unpredictable, as the steering's response is vague and nonlinear just off-center.
In city driving, this just makes the Spectra require lots of corrections when traveling in a straight line. But on gently winding roads, where you never move the wheel that far off-center, the nonlinear response gives the Spectra's steering an odd, squirmy feeling of inertia, and it really is hard to get the nose pointed exactly where you want it. This made twisty secondary roads--usually my favorite kind of route--feel like work.
To be fair, I will say that the Nissan Sentra's system is even less precise around the straight-ahead, and since the weighting remains consistent even in the vague zone, it doesn't feel likere's any play in the steering. But that's not enough to overcome this fairly egregious flaw, and the rest of the Spectra's handling characteristics are equally unsatisfying.
When I drove the Spectra briskly on the aforementioned twisty road, its chassis felt stable and predictable, but the body leaned heavily, and its skinny tires felt tangibly short on grip. Also, if I accelerated in turns, I could feel torque effects tugging at the steering wheel, detracting even further from my sense of control.
Last but not least is the issue of the Spectra's shuddery body structure. When I hit bumps or potholes in the middle of a corner, the car felt flustered and altered its line a little in response. One particularly nasty pothole nudged the front end of the car at least a few inches off-course. Also, when you get up to speed on patchy freeways, the body flexes and quivers virtually non-stop, which worsens its already-mediocre sense of straight ahead.
Ride
Making matters worse is the fact that the outgoing Spectra's ungainly handling is not compensated for by a smooth ride. In fact, this car has the stiffest and noisiest ride of anything in its class--or even the class below, except for Kia's own Rio. On smooth roads, it felt generally settled and although it transmitted grainy pavement textures a bit too clearly, it was good enough to be called comfortable. But as soon as I hit the rough sections, the Spectra's ride quality went south. Bumps and potholes registered with noisy clunks and bangs from the suspension, and when the impacts were really sharp, the car's structure quivered along with them. Noise levels, as I've mentioned, were quite high, especially from the engine room.
There was plenty of road noise and wind rush, too, but most of the disturbance came from the labored groaning under the hood. The Spectra is at its worst at high speeds on patchy concrete freeways. There, not only is there the noise and clunking to contend with, but a non-stop shuddering from the body structure that makes the car feel loose and shoddily-constructed. The newly redesigned Spectra has improved leaps and bounds over this model in the this department.
Interior
Just when you thought I couldn't get any more negative, we come to the issue of the outgoing Spectra's interior. But before I get into this, I really want to emphasize that I have nothing against Kias. I really like the redesigned 2004.5 Spectra, I thought the Rio was okay, and since this company been the perennial underdog in America for the last several years, I've always wanted their cars to turn out better than they have. But when it comes to this Spectra's interior, I simply can't give any compliments.
The whole thing looks like a generic, low-quality assemblage of parts dating from the early 1990s. The dashboard is a bland, derivative design rendered in hard, cheap-feeling plastics, and the plain-stenciled gauges look too small, lost in the blackness of the gauge pod. The door panels feel thin and insubstantial, and the fabric inserts are made of the same rough, unpleasant fabric as the Spectra's seats. The controls are easy enough to find and use, but they feel stiff and clunky in operation, especially the climate-control knobs. Everything inside the Spectra makes it feel like a used car--even the steering wheel feels coarse and rough.
Some of this could have been forgiven if there had been any clever or thoughtful touches in the Spectra's interior, but "surprise and delight" are not part of this car's vocabulary. Interior storage is minimal, with meager door pockets and a small glovebox. The cupholders are shallow, so if you drive as enthusiastically as I do, you'll have a thoroughly coffee-stained wardrobe in no time. The dashboard lacks the abundance of cubbies and drawers that most of its rivals display--the new 2004.5 Spectra, for example, has five separate cubbies, not including those in the armrest and door panels, while the outgoing model has just two. Not a lot of detail-sweating going on here.
Comfort levels are also well below par in the early-2004 Spectra. The seats feel flat and thinly padded, and as mentioned before, their fabric is rough and unpleasant. There's enough room in the front to stretch out comfortably, but the rear seat is tight--when I sat back there, my knees pressed firmly against the driver's seatback--and its cushion is even less comfortable than those in the front.
When you combine these not-particularly-friendly accommodations with the cheap and hard plastics, it gives the Spectra's interior a drab and dreary appearance that's really quite gloomy. Getting into a new car is usually exciting for me, so for an interior to kill the mood like the Spectra's did, you know it's bad. But just so you know I'm being fair, there were a couple bright spots in the Spectra's interior. The driving position was good, visibility was excellent due to the low cowl and thin pillars, and the control layout placed everything where I expected it to be. Unfortunately, that's the best I can do for compliments.
Practicality
Here's one area where the outgoing Spectra actually surpasses the redesigned model in some respects. The main reason is that the early-2004 model is available as a five-door hatchback, where the 2004.5 version can only be had as a sedan. So in the five-door version, there's considerably more cargo space and flexibility than in the new model. With the back seats folded down (a split-folding rear seat is standard equipment), I could fit my bass guitar and amplifier in with room to spare, a task which might have been iffy for the newer Spectra's smaller cargo hold.
Still, there are other areas where the outgoing Spectra falls behind its redesigned stablemate. Its interior doesn't feel nearly as roomy, and the seats are nowhere near as comfortable as those in the new model--especially in back. The bigger cargo hold of the new car might be a liability once in a great while, but realistically, the seats are what you're going to use every day, and that's where the early-2004 Spectra falls way, way behind.
Reliability
Consumer Reports doesn't have any reliability data on the outgoing Spectra, or many other Kias, presumably because they haven't sold in large enough numbers to get an accurate sample group. The only two Kia models they have reliability ratings for are the Sorento SUV and Sedona minivan, which scored Average and Worse Than Average, respectively. This suggests the Spectra's reliability shouldn't be catastrophic, at least, and it may even nudge close to Average.
But on the other side of the argument, the Kia's rattly, insubstantial feel and poor materials quality were hardly impressive--and certainly didn't instill much confidence in its long-term durability. But Kia seems to be confident it will hold up well, considering their lengthy warranty coverage (5 years or 60,000 miles bumper to bumper, 10 years or 100,000 miles powertrain). So it's not really something there's enough data on to make a judgment.
Overall
Although the outgoing Spectra's low prices are certainly appealing at first glance, there are two major problems that stop me well short of recommending it to anyone.
For one thing, the overriding impression this car leaves is that you get what you pay for. Its interior feels cheap, generic, and dreary, its road manners are disjointed, and its general demeanor is loud and rattly. It really does feel like a ten-year-old car, right off the showroom floor, and I can't see anyone--even the most undemanding drivers--being pleased with its overwhelming lack of refinement. Even Kia's lower-priced Rio feels like a better car.
Now, the second problem: The all-new, 2004.5 Spectra isn't priced all that much higher than this outgoing model that's still being sold alongside it. Both the five-door 2004 model and the four-door 2004.5 model I test-drove stickered at about $14,000 dollars. There are some rebates available on the 2004 model, but not enough to compensate for the massive gap in quality and driving enjoyment. There is simply no comparison between the two versions in these departments, so if a salesperson offers you an early-2004 model with a more-attractive price tag, don't even think about it.
If the $13,000-$15,000 price tage affixed to most 2004.5 Spectras is too much, try some cars from the next size class down--the Hyundai Accent and Scion models are viable alternatives--or hit the used car market and look for something off-lease and certified. Kia is making big steps forward in quality, and this Spectra is way behind the curve. It looks like a new car outside, but feels a decade old underneath--so insist on the new one, or check out the slew of offerings from other manufacturers.
Feel free to check out my reviews of some of the Spectra's competitors:
Chevrolet Cavalier
Dodge Neon
Honda Civic
Hyundai Elantra
2004.5 Kia Spectra
Mazda 3
Mitsubishi Lancer
Nissan Sentra
Saturn Ion
Suzuki Aerio
Suzuki Forenza
Toyota Corolla
Volkswagen Golf
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 14,000
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
drive571
|
 in Cars & Motorsports |
 - Top 200 |
|
Member: P.J. McCombs
Location: Berkeley, California
Reviews written: 138
Trusted by: 70 members
About Me:
New baby at home: a 1999 Mazda Miata in British Racing Green!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.