2014 Kia Soul + on 2040-cars

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2020 Kia Telluride is an American-made SUV, for America

Given consumers' ravenous appetite for them, it's little surprise that Kia is introducing a larger, more upmarket SUV in the Telluride as the newest entry in its lineup. But the automaker turned to classic SUVs of yesteryear as influences for the intentionally boxy and very American design that it hopes will translate with consumers. Dubbed a midsize by Kia, the Telluride will slot above the entry-level, compact Sorento as the flagship of the Korean automaker's utility-vehicle lineup. Michael Cole, Kia's North America chief operating officer, said the midsize segment is forecast to grow from 1.6 million units sold in the U.S. in 2018 to 1.8 million in five years. "This was somewhere we needed to be," he said. It's also the first Kia designed specifically for the U.S. market, with its off-road features like on-demand electronic all-wheel drive transferring torque between the front and rear wheels and its strong, stiff body, further emphasized by its unveiling in Detroit on a landscaped "torque track" assembled in surplus space on the Cobo show floor. It'll also be built at Kia's plant in West Point, Ga. "It's very much a U.S.-targeted vehicle," Cole said. "We will have some export. But the message is, made in America, made for America, it's a U.S.-centric car." Designers at Kia's design center in Irvine, Calif. "wanted to get back to a traditional SUV styling," Chief Designer Tom Kearns said. "So many EVs and SUVs these days are trying to look sporty and more car-like, more sedan-like. We didn't want to go with that approach." Kearns said his design team members referenced old-school SUVs like the Ford Bronco, old Land Rovers and the original Chevrolet Blazer when creating the Telluride, Kia's largest SUV yet. "It's not retro, but we like the genuine feel and look, the purity of old-school SUVs with the long hoods, little bit more upright windshield, not a lot of glass angles, tumblehome a little more upright, just feels more purposeful and genuine to us," he said. "Our goal is very clean, very simple, not a lot of ornamentation, just a pure, nice form that's hopefully conveying a clean, functional appearance." Inside, the designers took largely the same approach, with a clean console that emphasizes horizontality and width, matte-finished wood and simulated brushed metal accents and big grab handles flanking the shifter that emphasize the vehicle's sense of adventure.

Hyundai, Kia and U of M studying 'highway hypnosis'

Next up on the hot-button list of things that can kill you behind the wheel: "highway hypnosis." That's the zombie-like, autopilot phase you get into on a long highway drive when there isn't much to distract you, like curves or traffic. Digging further into what it is and how to combat it, Hyundai-Kia engineers and the University of Michigan are commencing a study that will measure brainwave activity in order to track the body's slide into highway hypnosis.
We're not sure how much overlap this has with Mercedes-Benz's Attention Assist, which tracks more than 70 in-car parameters to determine when you're not focused on the road anymore. That system is billed as an alarm against fatigue, in our experience it does more than that - if you use your phone while driving, for instance, it will chirp.
They don't know what form a warning system will take yet, but Hyundai-Kia plans to develop a method for warning drivers when they being to zone out. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were more than three thousand deaths and nearly 400,000 injuries due to distracted driving in 2011.

2014 Kia Forte Koup SX

The Kia Forte and Hyundai Elantra have long followed similar paths, with each available in a four-door sedan, a five-door hatch and (most recently) a two-door coupe bodystyle. The recent death of the Hyundai Elantra Coupe in the US may be threatening to change the narrative on these two affordable compact lines, of course, but the Korean two-doors have a lot in common under their distinct skins. Their most recent iterations came to market under the power of the same 2.0-liter, 173-horsepower four-cylinder paired with six-speed automatic transmissions and riding atop MacPherson strut front suspensions and torsion-beam setups out back. Each arrived weighing between 2,800 and 3,000 pounds and could be had in base form for less than $20,000. Considering this, the empirical performance stats figured to be similar.
There's an important distinction to be made, however. Rather than offer a simple two-door version of a four-door car, like Hyundai did with its Elantra Coupe, Kia has gone to lengths to craft a vehicle with its own unique attitude and attributes. Kia has embraced a sportier stance with its two-door Forte Koup, offering up a standard six-speed manual and going further in an effort to craft a more unique, aggressive coupe design.
That drive to be different was further accentuated last year, when Kia raided Hyundai's parts bin and plucked out the 1.6-liter turbocharged four-cylinder from the Veloster Turbo. The resulting car is decidedly different than any other Forte we've tested, while also feeling like a better all-around product than the smaller hot hatch it stole its engine from. To see just how much better, we drove the Forte Koup SX for a week and set about seeing how this enhanced model stacks up as a performance offering.