Cons: Float, lean in turns, light steering, fuel economy
The Bottom Line: Great interior and very quiet, especially considering the price. If a Buick, Lincoln, or Toyota Avalon is normally your sort of thing you should check out the Amanti.
Mercedes has long offered the best power seat controls in the business. Shaped to resemble a seat, and thus thoroughly intuitive to use, these are mounted on the door where they are easy to see and reach. When Nissan included similar controls in the first Infiniti Q45, Mercedes sued them for patent infringement, forcing a redesign.
Sitting in the new Kia Amanti, the largest, most luxurious car yet from Korea, I instantly noted Mercedes-style seat controls on the doors. The patent has lapsed at this point, yet few manufacturers have adopted similar controls. That Kia has suggests higher aspirations than we've even seen before in a Korean product.
Styling
Mind you, the Kia Amanti isn’t intended to compete with anything Mercedes makes. Rather, it is designed to appeal to the domestic luxury car crowd, the people who buy Buicks while aspiring to Cadillacs (the Deville, anyway) and Lincolns. The Amanti isn’t the first Asian product to pursue this market; Toyota has been selling the Avalon for a decade and Kia’s sister brand, Hyundai, has been selling the XG350 for a few years. But the Amanti represents a more serious effort than either of those, especially the Hyundai.
This seriousness begins with the size of the car. The Avalon and XG350 are both 192 inches long, strictly midsize car territory even if the former is large inside. In contrast, the Kia 196-inch length nearly matches that of the large Lexus and regular wheelbase BMW 7-series. Though only moderately wide at 73 inches, the Amanti is also a very tall car at 59 inches. The bottom line: You cannot buy this large a car from an Asian brand for under $40,000.
Though the Kia Amanti’s height makes it appear less lengthy than it is, it still has more road presence than either the Avalon or XG350. Its styling helps. While the Avalon’s styling is stiff and thoroughly forgettable, and the XG350’s is dated and borderline tacky, the Amanti looks very much like the current Lincoln Town Car (too much for this resemblance to just be coincidental). Just with a foot and a half less length, yielding stubby proportions, and a front end borrowed from the Jag S-Type. Although such stiff, formal styling is not my cup of tea, I can see how it may strongly appeal to the intended market. Especially those members of this market who don't have a strong eye for proportions.
The Kia Amanti’s interior styling is thoroughly conventional, with the flat-topped, straight across instrument panel domestic luxury buyers must prefer since the Avalon, Park Avenue, and Town Car all have similar designs.
While the interior theme is probably too conventional to impress anyone, its thoroughness of design and quality of materials will. I’ve already mentioned the seat controls, but there are other instances. For example, the gauges are light years better than those in the XG350. Instead of a common black faceplate like you’ll find in any economy car, the Amanti’s speedometer and tach are slightly recessed, ringed with chrome, and have a white band with black hash marks around the perimeter of their black faces. Not high-tech like some instruments these days, but very classy.
Upholstered door armrests and panels, like those you’ll find in a $70,000+ European luxury car or the Lexus LS 430 (but not the base LS 430, just one with a pricey luxury package) greatly help the ambiance of luxury. I’m not sure how much of the door upholstery is actual leather, but the effect is much the same. These armrests look good and feel good, both in the hand and under the elbow.
The seats are attractively styled to suggest luxury without resorting to a loose-pillow look. Here the inspiration looks more Lexus. A large number of seat panels are joined by attractively curved seams. The panels framing the butt-pocket are perforated, which lends an additional level of visual detail without resorting to funky piping or two-tones.
Finally, there’s the issue of wood. There’s a lot of it. And it’s not the real thing. Thankfully, it is well-integrated into the design of the interior. I imagine it looks real enough, but a less orange shade would be better.
Put all of these details together with materials that invariably look and feel like quality—all surfaces are soft, very rare in a car that costs less than $30,000—and I found the Amanti’s interior its strongest aspect.
My largest issue with the Kia Amanti’s styling concerns color choices. You cannot get much in the way of color in this car. On the exterior, the only “colors” available are a characterless medium blue and an almost-black red. I’m not expecting a bright red, but some richer medium-dark blues, greens, and reds might be nice. Inside the only choices are light gray and black. The gray is fairly warm for a gray, but that’s not saying much. A warm tan would suit this interior well.
Accommodations
Unlike in most competitors, including the Avalon, a front bench is not available in the Kia Amanti. A console every bit as wide as that in a rear-drive sedan is standard.
You sit a bit higher in the Amanti than in the average car, adding to its luxury character. The dash is also a bit higher than average, though, so the view forward is neither more nor less expansive than in the average medium-large sedan.
The front seats are moderately firm, more like those in a Lexus than those in a Town Car, and generally very comfortable. Unlike those in an increasing number of vehicles they do not feel undersized. Lateral support is marginal, but then this isn’t a sport sedan.
The Kia Amanti's rear seats are even more comfortable than the front seats. Maybe because in Korean large sedans tend to be chauffeur-driven? These seats are a bit softer and cup the body a bit more. Their cushions have enough rake and height off the floor to provide good thigh support. Legroom is better than average, easily adequate for a six-foot person, but no match for a truly full-size car. On paper the rear seat in the XG350 is nearly as roomy, but it feels significantly less roomy and is not nearly as comfortable.
Trunk volume at 15.5 cubic feet is good but not great. Many members of the intended market want great, so this might be a sticking point. The trunk is usefully shaped. However, the rear seat does not fold to enlarge it. A passthrough is provided, but even this is on the small side. Inside the cabin the various storage areas are at least average in size but certainly not exceptional.
On the Road
The Kia Amanti is powered by the same 3.5-liter V6 found in many of the larger Hyundai and Kia vehicles, though in this application it makes a few more horses, for a total of 200. This isn’t very many for a 24-valve six of this size. Nissan’s 3.5 makes between 240 and 287 in its various applications. Midrange power is better, but still down at least ten percent compared to competitors’ 3.5-liter engines. Even the pushrod, 12-valve 3.5-liter in the Chevrolet Malibu posts nearly identical numbers.
Still, this engine feels fairly energetic in the Hyundai Santa Fe and XG350. It’s aided in all these applicatioins by a five-speed automatic; the extra ratio compared to many competitors helps the engine get into its powerband more quickly and stay there.
However, the Kia Amanti is heavier than those other vehicles. It weighs just over two tons—a bit more than the Lexus LS 430 and Cadillac DeVille. All of Hyundai/Kia’s larger vehicles weigh hundreds of pounds more than the norm. I don’t know why. Perhaps a lack of expertise designing strong yet lightweight large vehicle structures. I do know that this harms both their performance and their fuel economy, though.
In the case of the Amanti, powertrain performance is easily adequate but far from exceptional. I never felt the car was downright sluggish, but it didn’t strike me a powerful, either. Which is probably enough for most members of its intended market. The engine does sound quieter and more refined here than in its other applications. The EPA numbers are 17/25, about the worst you'll see in a car these days. Even a Lincoln Town Car does a bit better. And even these numbers are cheated a bit. Availability of the sunroof is limited because if most Amanti’s were equipped with it then the EPA would require that the car tested be so equipped. Apparently this would bump the Amanti into a higher weight class and result in even lower numbers.
The Kia Amanti is very softly sprung. Fling it into a turn and it leans more than most sedans these days and plows quite a bit. But then this car’s intended buyers tend to be among your more sedate drivers. The Regals, LeSabres, and Avalons they currently drive handle much the same. Driven sedately, the Amanti feels solid and composed. My main complaint then is that the steering feels too light, but then again most of the intended buyers probably like it this way.
The softly sprung suspension irons out most bumps and dips very well but can be moderately upset by the big stuff. I detected some float at speed, but not nearly as much as in American iron of decades past. Again, not my thing but probably much in line with intended buyers’ expectations. Noise levels are very low for a car in this price range, though not quite down to Lexus levels.
The best thing about the Kia Amanti on the road will not be reflected in any road test statistics: from the driver’s seat it feels like a solidly constructed luxury car. In this it succeeds better than a Buick Regal or Toyota Avalon. I drove a Hyundai XG350 immediately afterwards, and it felt like a guzzied-up economy sedan in comparison.
Safety
The Kia Amanti comes standard with eight airbags, including side curtains and side torso bags in both the front and rear seats. Stability control is part of an optional package that because it requires the sunroof package can be hard to find. Although crash tests might find otherwise, these features plus the car’s weight suggest it should be very safe.
Kia Amanti Price Comparisons and Pricing
For quick, up-to-date pricing, and especially user-specified price comparisons, check out the website I created: www.truedelta.com. Why yet another vehicle pricing website? Well, I personally lacked the patience to keep using the others. They were too slow and required too much effort, especially when trying to compare prices. So I taught myself some programming and created a site where there is no need to dig through option packages, prerequisites, and the like one by one -- the TrueDelta algorithm figures these out for you in one swift pass.
The Kia Amanti starts at $25,535. The car I drove was fitted with the $1,805 leather package, which includes leather seats with memory, CD changer, and trip computer. Two other packages are available but tend to be rare to avoid bumping the car into the next EPA weight class. A sunroof/heated seats package costs $900 and requires the leather. A stability control/traction control package costs $550 and requires all of the above. I’d recommend getting everything if you can find such a car. The $28,790 list is low considering the car’s size, features, and high-quality interior. Edmunds suggests that the typical discount is about $1,000, but the dealer I visited suggested a price closer to sticker. Beginning in May a $1,500 rebate is available, lowering the price of a loaded Amanti to about $26,300.
A similarly-equipped Toyota Avalon, the most comparable car, lists for $33,565 and costs about $30,700 after the typical dealer discount. So figure about $4,500 more than the Kia.
After discounts and rebates a Hyundai XG350 costs about $3,500 less than the Kia, but the Kia is worth this premium. Domestic alternatives like the Mercury Sable and Buick Regal also cost between two and four thousand dollars less, but feel less luxurious and do not offer as many safety features.
A similarly-equipped Chrysler 300 Limited lists for $32,370, and Edmunds suggests no discount, probably because it’s too new for good transaction price info.
Overall, the Kia Amanti seems very competitively priced for what it offers, especially with the new rebate.
Final Words
For its intended mission the Kia Amanti is a very good car for its price. Although powertrain and chassis performance are just acceptable, and fuel economy might be ugly, the interior is perhaps the best offered in a car for less than $30,000 and the car’s ride quality, noise levels, and general feel support its luxury mission. Recommended for those who might otherwise buy a Buick, Toyota Avalon, or even Lincoln Town Car. If you’re willing to trade some luxury feel for better handling, check out the Chrysler 300.
Years ago Buick used to advertise, "When better cars are built, Buick will build them." Sadly, this didn't happen. What has now happened, though, is that Kia has built an even better Buick than Toyota.
A Note on Kia Amanti Reliability
I cannot practically cover reliability within the context of this review. However, many people are interested in such information, so I've started collecting my own data. Results, once they are available, will be posted to my site, www.truedelta.com, with updates every three months.
Unlike other sources, TrueDelta will clearly identify what difference it will make if you buy an Amanti rather than another vehicle by providing "times in the shop" and "days in the shop" stats (among others). You will be able to specify the number of years, annual miles, and types of repairs to include in Kia Amanti reliability comparisons.
Before I can report results, I need reliability data on all cars--not just the Amanti--from people like you. To encourage participation, those who help provide the data will receive free access to the site's reliability information. Non-participants will have to pay an access fee.
For the details, and to sign up, visit www.truedelta.com.
A link to this website and alphabetized links to my other vehicle reviews can be found on my profile page.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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