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2014 Kia Optima is better by a nose

Kia is showing off a slew of vehicles here in New York, including the ever-so-slightly refreshed 2014 Optima sedan you see here. The brunt of the changes surround the new front fascia, with repositioned LED lighting above the headlamp units and some new quad-LED fogs rounding of a touched-up front bumper. At the rear, Kia has reworked the taillamps, and of course, LEDs are found there, as well.
Other changes to the Optima for 2014 include the additions of two new displays inside the cabin - a 4.3-inch TFT display in the gauge cluster and a larger, eight-inch high-resolution screen that houses the navigation and infotainment data. There are also new seats inside the Optima, which are hopefully more comfortable and offer better bolstering than the decidedly flat chairs found in the current car, plus Kia has added available new safety features like blind spot monitoring and cross-traffic alert.
The powertrain offerings have not changed for 2014 - base cars still get a naturally aspirated 2.4-liter engine while the SX models get the 2.0-liter turbo. There is, however, a new Drive Mode Select system specifically for the SX, which adjusts transmission shift points and steering weight for a more engaging dynamic, or so we're told. (The Optima Hybrid model did receive upgrades to its battery and electric motor just recently, but those changes technically hit during the 2013 model year - it is not immediately clear if the gas-electric model will receive the updates shown here).

2018 Kia Stinger GT Long-Term Review Update | What living with the Stinger is like

You're going to like looking at it, and everyone else will too Man, this car is slick. It's long and low with curves in all the right places. Kia toed the line between in-your-face sportiness and luxury with every design decision on this car. I don't often feel the urge to look back at a car as I walk away, but the Stinger has a way of drawing my eye back to it wherever I go. The bright red paint might be partially responsible for this, but I've found I'm not alone. Everywhere I drive, this car turns heads and brings about inquisitive stares from onlookers — the Kia badge just causes brows to furrow deeper. Never in history have random passersby been this interested in a Kia. It makes sense, though. We don't often see completely new, from-the-ground-up sports sedans these days. The Stinger's fastback shape just makes it even more enticing and refreshingly different. Noticing the sidewalk interest in a car like the Stinger gives me a glimmer of hope for other great sedans to make it through the crossover-apocalypse. Big car, but a small back seat The usable space in the rear seat runs counter to how long and large the car looks. First off, the way the door is shaped makes for a narrow space to slide your body through. It's wide on top but narrows closer to the ground. That's no problem for a young and limber person such as myself, but less flexible folk may find it annoying. With the seat positioned for my 5-foot-10-inch frame, rear legroom is a bit scarcer than I would have thought. Throwing kids back there would be fine, but it still came off as one of the larger disappointments in my book. You'll enjoy the cargo space, though. Hatches are almost always more utilitarian than sedans with trunks, and this trend continues for the Stinger. Loading and unloading is an easy task, and you can shove a ton of stuff back there. Somewhat limited visibility through the short rear window from the driver seat is the only downside of the rear hatch design. It has a dual personality This car firmly plants itself onto the list of ideal daily drivers. Leave it in Comfort mode, turn the Harman Kardon stereo up, and relax on your way to the office. Twist the dial over to Sport, and you'll blow everybody else away getting on the highway as you head home. Like we said in our last long-term update, the Stinger is the perfect GT car, and we stand by that. You can use it as a backroad scalpel on weekends. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say it handles like a sports car.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.