2024 Kia Seltos Ex on 2040-cars

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Kia's promised "four-door coupe" Cub concept... isn't

Kia appears to have pulled a quick one on the world with its Cub Concept. As it turns out, the machine isn't the four-door coupe they promised at all. Instead, the little showcar is a five-door hatch with suicide rear doors. That's certainly fine by our reckoning, but it isn't quite what we were expecting to see on display at the Seoul Motor Show. The concept was penned at the company's design studio in Seoul with direction from Peter Schreyer, and it gets its thrust from a 204-horsepower, 1.6-liter direct-injection four-cylinder engine. With 195 pound-feet of torque on hand, we suspect the Cub would have little trouble hustling down the road.
Indoors, the Cub serves up black leather seats with yellow accents as well as a new Driving Information System that uses a gesture camera to control various operations. Right now, there are apparently no plans to put the Cub into production anywhere in the world, but we wouldn't be surprised to see some of the hatchback's elements make their way to the show room floor.

Hyundai and Kia to hit record 8M sales for 2014

Hyundai and Kia are on a sales charge in 2014, and parent company Hyundai Motor Group is increasing projections to a record eight million combined units for the automakers by the end of the year – a bump over the original target of 7.86 million vehicles. According to Bloomberg, the key to the growth is beating expectations in Brazil, China and India, and strong crossover sales are also helping the bottom line. In the US, both automakers are doing well this year. In October, Hyundai saw a six percent dip in monthly sales, but through the first 10 months it sold 607,539 vehicles, compared to 601,773 at this point last year. Kia has done even better with 489,711 units sold from January to October, versus 456,137 for the period in 2013. The good news is a welcome antidote to negative headlines like investors' anger over Hyundai's $10 billion land purchase in Seoul, South Korea. The two automakers also had to pay a $300 million penalty to the Environmental Protection Agency for misstating fuel economy on some models. While sales may reach a new record, profits might not grow as much with them. The strong Korean won means that Hyundai and Kia have a tougher time keeping up profit margins compared to Japanese competitors with a weaker yen.

Kia Seltos Luggage Test | How much cargo space?

The Kia Seltos starts at $21,990, which is consistent with a growing number of crossovers that slot in between sub-compact models (Hyundai Kona, Kia Soul, etc) and compact models (Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, etc). We now call this the midcompact segment. The Mazda CX-30 would be another example, and while the Mazda's engaging driving experience and stylish near-luxury interior are its prime selling points, the Seltos boasts expressive color combinations, distinctive styling details throughout and an ample amount of interior space that rivals bigger, pricier SUVs. As I discovered at the L.A. Auto Show, that includes Kia's own Sportage, which may have more power and higher-quality interior materials (plus a higher price), but has roughly the same passenger space and less maximum cargo capacity. To these eyes, it also looks worse.  On paper, the Seltos has 26.6 cubic-feet of cargo room behind the back seat, which would indeed be greater than sub-compact models but less than the CR-V's of the world. The CX-30 has 20.1 cubic-feet and you can see its luggage test here.  Like some other crossovers, including next week's Mercedes GLB, the Seltos has a dual-height cargo floor. The upper height is pretty much there to meet up with the folded rear seatbacks to create a flat-ish load floor. Since there's only a spare tire and bare metal below it, I saw no reason to test the cargo capacity with the high-floor setup. It seems logical that Seltos owners would almost exclusively use the lower, more voluminous floor height.  On to the luggage. I use two midsize roller suitcases that would need to be checked in at the airport (26 inches long, 16 wide, 11 deep), two roll-aboard suitcases that just barely fit in the overhead (24L x 15W x 10D), and one smaller roll-aboard that fits easily (23L x 15W x 10D). I also include my wife's fancy overnight bag just to spruce things up a bit (21L x 12W x 12D).  That would be all the roller bags (no fancy bag) even with the rigid, hatchback-style cargo cover in place. Excellent. That's the same amount of bags as the CX-30 could manage with NO cargo cover. Basically, the size difference indicated on paper is confirmed.  Remove the Seltos cargo cover and not only does the fancy bag fit, but there'd be room for another duffel bag.  This amount of height and width is comparable to those crossovers that are technically a size up in the "compact" category. The difference, though, is cargo area depth.