From the 2013 Chicago Auto Show, Cars.com's Kelsey Mays takes a look at the 2014 Kia Cadenza.
Transcript
(car hood closing) (Rock music playing) Hi, I'm Kelsey Mays for cars.com. You remember the Kia Amanti? It was Kia's large front wheel drive sedan and competed with the likes of the Toyota Avalon, the Dodge Charger, the Ford Taurus.
You're probably Googling it right now because you think I'm making that car up, which should tell you just how memorable it was. Kia is hoping for better success here with the all new Cadenza, it competes with those cars. It's Kias full-sized car, we're at the auto show. Let's take a closer look. The Cadenza is actually an inch shorter and about a half inch lower than the old Amanti. It's still much bigger than Kias mid-sized Optima though, about five inches longer bumper to bumper and nearly an inch taller. You get around front here and you notice Kias familiar grill here with the cutouts center, top, and bottom. It actually sits lower and farther forward. It's a little bit taller than on other Kias. You come around the side here, they've got kind of these little eyebrows here, similar to what BMW does on some of its cars. A nice little Chrome detail here with the fog lights, it kind of curls up and around. Let's go check out the rear. In back the Cadenza has led taillights and dual tailpipes. You notice some very Audi like proportions here. We see a little bit of Audi A8 in the way that the tail kind of gently comes into a squarish form in the back. Not a bad look. Pretty conservative interior design and not really exceptional room exceptionally for a full-size car. Quality looks to be pretty good. You've got things like fabric down the pillars for the windows. Typical of large semi premium cars. There's kind of a leatherette thing over the instruments, same as the Kia Optima has in uplevel trims. There's a screen here between the gauges in this car at the auto show with a virtual speedometer. We're seeing a lot of cars kind of go in that direction as well. Very well equipped, the Cadenza, there's things like a standard navigation system, backup camera, power-adjustable, leather seats, things like premium Nappa leather, panoramic moonroof. Those things are optional. Let's take a look at the backseat. Now, large cars typically offer a big back seat and the Cadenza delivers. I'm about six feet tall. That's where I would sit to drive. And as you can see, I have plenty of room back here. Lots of leg room leftover the seat sits reasonably high off the ground. There's not a huge center floor hump here. Just a very slight one. It doesn't rob too much footwell space and decent headroom, not bad given that this car does have the optional panoramic moonroof, which typically robs a little bit of headroom. Under the hood has a standard direct injection V6. It's good for 293 horsepower, gas mileage still to be determined. Now, if you think the Cadenza is a hard, obscure name to remember, and that could hamper the car's success realize that the Optima was kind of also in that territory and now it sells pretty well. We'll see if the Cadenza can accomplish the same success when it goes on sale this spring.
