Video: 2014 Kia Forte

Trim levels include the EX and the SX. What you're seeing here is the SX. Like the Forte sedan, the Forte hatchback has swept back headlights with LED positioning lights. EX models get standard 16 inch wheels. The SX gets 18's here. It also gets things like more aggressive bumper treatments, a little bit of fake carbon fiber here down below and dual tailpipes. Now here's why, it's got a 1.6 liter turbocharged, four cylinder. That's good for 201 horsepower, 195 pounds-feet of torque. You may have heard of this engine before. It was in the Hyundai Veloster Turbo. Hyundai and Kia are affiliated brands. The EX has a two liter direct injection four cylinder. That's good for 173 horsepower and 154 pounds-feet of torque. Not too shabby on that front either. Like the Forte sedan, the hatchback has kind of a cockpit theme here going on concentric sort of rings and circles that move out from around the instruments. Pretty versatile here. I'm about six feet tall and I've got plenty of room here to move my seat back. I would actually sit with it a little bit forward. Padding along all the important areas where your arms and your elbows are going to fall, an adjustable front arm rest here for shorter drivers, all of that good stuff. Pretty well equipped too. Standard things on the Forte Hatchback include a backup camera, Bluetooth, a leather wrapped steering wheel with audio and cruise controls. Pile the options high and this car can come very, very well equipped. Things like a dual zone automatic climate control, heated front and rear seats, a cooled ventilated driver's seat, heated steering wheel. Plenty of stuff there. Let's take a look at the backseat. Pretty well packaged backseat here. I've got a lot of headroom leftover here. That's one nice thing about a hatchback, cause you don't have a sedan roof line, that's kind of descending on your head. Reasonable leg room left over here. That's where I would sit to drive. Now behind the rear seats Kia says there's about 23 cubic feet of cargo volume. That's a big increase over the last Forte hatchback, which had less than 20 cubic feet. It's competitive with hatchbacks like the Ford Focus hatch. Significantly better than hatchbacks like the Mazda 3 hatchback, the Volkswagen golf, Volkswagen GTI. The Forte hatch goes on sale this summer. Now we've driven the sedan and we find it to be a pretty refined car, but a little bit soft on the handling front. We hope the hatchback can address that. Kia does say that it has unique suspension tuning versus the sedan. Now gas mileage pricing still to be determined. But the last Forte hatchback started around $19,000, including the destination charge. Stay tuned to cars.com and we'll let you know as soon as we find out pricing on its successor. (car engine roaring)