Well following on from my gratuitous display of pics in the Rio pics thread, i thought i'd start a bit of a build thread here.
Picked up the car last week as a new daily to take the burden off my Ford V8 which wasn't the most economical of cars in peak hour traffic (nearly 20 litres per 100km lol!!) It's the same car a few others from Australia have on here, the three door hatch which seems unavailable in the northern hemisphere for some weird reason. Has the 1.6, 17's, leather, climate control, cruise, auto wipers, DRL's, LED tail lights, keyless entry and push-button start, blah blah blah. It's a great car for the money and we got a good deal on it, including the token floor mats.
About a week or two before pickup day, we went and visited it down at the holding yard, still wearing its protective coverings and so on:
Then finally the day arrived, the car was all inspected, 'detailed' and registered. We went down after work to pick her up and this is how she looked waiting for her new home:
Really enjoyed the drive home, i find this car is the most impressive on the highway, 100KM/h or more. It certainly eats up the stop-start peak hour traffic but is very capable and spacious/comfortable on the open road. The leather seats are great, if a little un-supportive around quick bends, and the suspension was tuned locally for our roads, and done very well i might add. It's surprisingly comfortable for a little car riding on 17" wheels. I find the electric steering crap though. It's stupidly light at parking speed, then gets too heavy above about 60KM/h. There's just no feel to it in comparison with hydraulic steering, you can't tell what the wheels are doing and that's annoying. Either way it's the only drawback of a great car.
We ordered the car in basic form, it is a well appointed car for tech and features, basically blows all others in the price range away. It's a 6 speed manual with floor mats, no other options. First task was tint. Went for 35% which is a pretty good compromise, and looks very good contrasting with the white paint, looks darker than it is. Got it done at 7:30am on a saturday morning which wasn't the most pleasant time to start a weekend but it's for a good cause! Then we whacked some custom plates on that we already had on hold from a previous car (however i blank out plates on the net, sorry). I couldn't care less who looks at the plates either, it's purely for personalisation and colour theme in my books.
After this was done we went down the coast of Victoria to a picturesque area called Rye. Parked next to the beach and took some more pics:
The wife drives it a lot and finds the lack of rear visibility challenging when reverse parking in the crowded areas we drive in. For this reason i've booked the Rio in to the dealer to get rear parking sensors installed. Unsure if this just makes the standard sensor beeps or if it ties into a message on the dash too, haven't seen them working on another Rio, or even installed for that matter. Certainly not cheap! Over $500 AUD just for the rears installed. After-market options are half the price but i want it all genuine and properly integrated.
From there who knows, i have a few other plans up my sleeve. I'm also seriously considering buying another one, probably a 5 door this time in about a years time. Great cars!
test drives are departing on the hour, every hour, Wednesdays only!
yeh even the entry level models are great, certainly no need to be ashamed of having one! i'd happily have one, it just happens that i broke the salesman down so severely that it made buying the SLS model very possible.
By the way, I was talking to one of my coworkers last night. He supposedly has contacts with someone in South Korea(probably an engineer) that can get the turbo's for the KIA's. Slap 201 horse power under your hood, you'll need a parachute to slow the two door RIO down. He was told it would cost $1800 for the parts and the PCM flash unit. Not a bad price for increasing your horsepower by almost 70HP. One of my coworkers has already installed a turbo on his KIA Soul.
Changing the tyres helps a lot in getting more road feel in the little Kia. The floaty feeling goes and you get much more feel than normal in turns. Depending how far you want to go, you can put the x brace from the Veloster on the Kia. Changes its handling completely different to stock.
Little Kia dont need much at all to turn it into a capable fun car.
I was going to get a white SLS but went with the black one instead. Already have a white car and didnt want another one
did it lighten up the steering at speed? or make it heavier? It doesn't feel floaty to me, feels very planted in fact, and the tyres grip like heck and are brilliant in conditions where my other car(s) would aquaplane badly. My only real issue is the stupidly heavy steering at speed in comparison to parking speed. The lack of feel is inherent to some types of EPAS. The tyres are Continental Contisports which yours should have come with too, which are a very renowned tyre. Maybe yours were faulty?
as it stands, for day to day driving i'm already saving $30 to $35 per 400KM travelled. Yes you read right! We average about 600KM per week so that's an annual saving of $2535. Not too shabby
I may have you beat. Within two weeks I'll be averaging 643 km or 400 miles a week in the RIO. It will be as high as 764 Km or 475 miles a week for the foreseeable future since I'm moving to a different department.
Many of my coworkers drive KIA's. I call them my beta testers. Since many have owned theirs for several years now, it gave me a chance to see how durable the cars were. All of them average 25,000 miles a year or more in their KIA's. None of them have complained of mechanical failure or major issues.That's why I bought one!
How long did you spend in Korea? I been learning Korean for last couple years when I can. I still cant read Korean and can only pick out mainly names if Ive seen it enough to remember. I can speak a little bit of it but its easier to learn to speak from reading Hangul than reading the romanized version of Korean. You get the soundings easier without confusing it with English soundings. You also learn Engrish at the same time. Engrish is much easier than English.
Also helps if your Eastern European; the soundings are similar.
I was over in January for a couple of weeks. You're well ahead of me in understanding the languange.:lol:
I work with Koreans every day who speak broken English, some not at all. It's funny, sometimes when we're trying to communicate with one another. It becomes more of sign language and a lot of pointing and mimicking processes.
Yes, I think the German prestige influences are very obvious on the K9- perhaps even too much so (lack of originality). I haven't seen the K9 in person and it won't be sold here so I'll just have to take your word for it joesyah! It certainly commands a lot of respect but I just think that grille treatment does not suit.
Acording to the fella at Tuners Depot H&R will be putting out suspension parts in late summer for the 2012 Rio. They currently sell lowering springs, so hopefully we will be taking it up a notch from there.
that's good to know, they'll become a bit of a tuners car to a small extent over time.
Just got back from the car's first real road trip. Took it up to N.E. Victoria into some very pretty countryside. The whole trip was around 700KM and aside from a very weird glitch with the cruise control, the car was flawless the whole way. The road noise isn't very intrusive, and the leather seats are very comfortable for long trips. It returned 6.7L/100KM (around 42MPG from memory) with the two of us, and a boot full of luggage, doing 110KM/h the whole way. That economy will undoubtedly get even better as the car wears in further. It has quietened down, become more smooth, and has a fair bit of poke now that its' done just on 1500KM (in 9 days lol).
Here are a handful of shots taken in bad lighting down one of the scenic tracks in the area.
You do get better mileage as it gets more km's under it. Im heading up to the 9k mark with mine and have noticed I getting more out of every tank. Once you work out the gearing in it you learn by yourself how to get the economy and how to keep the car in its sweet spots.
Also noticed the low fuel warning comes on when you got around 10l left in the tank. Dont know if it says that in the book as I only looked at the pictures
i found it weird this car has no low-fuel chime or flashing range warning, just the light. Bit odd for a fully loaded 2012 car. Not a big deal though i guess.
The girlfriend and I took a short road trip today visiting a couple of museums over a 100 mile stretch. It has rained pretty much all day here. We were both impressed at how the RIO handled the small country roads and the highway. The way this car handled in the down pours on the highway at 70 mph/ 112 kph was reassuring!
It doesn't have the maneuverability of my former Jaguar S-type. But it is much more stable on the wet roads. Once up to speed , I feel like the car isn't under any strain. It feels much more powerful than the 1.6 liter engine would lead one to believe. The automatic transmission is smoother than the one in my Jag was.
The 6 speed is VERY smooth! All vehicles should come with no less than six gears IMO.
I ragged my girlfriend over the gas mileage compared to her Acura MDX. That thing is gawd awful when it comes to gas mileage!:lol:
haha - yeah the way the Rio handles and rides on the freeway is in my opinion one of its strongest points, it was the first thing i noticed on the way home from the dealership. Very surprising, and yes in rain it feels 100% planted, it barely aqua(hydra)planes at all.
re mileage: my old Ford Fairmont V8, while suprisingly quick with loads of torque from the word go, was getting 19L/100 when we used it as a daily in peak hour traffic. Could be worse i guess, maybe? nah probably not. It meant the tank (68L) @ $80-$90 per fill lasted about 330KM heh.
haha - yeah the way the Rio handles and rides on the freeway is in my opinion one of its strongest points, it was the first thing i noticed on the way home from the dealership. Very surprising, and yes in rain it feels 100% planted, it barely aqua(hydra)planes at all.
re mileage: my old Ford Fairmont V8, while suprisingly quick with loads of torque from the word go, was getting 19L/100 when we used it as a daily in peak hour traffic. Could be worse i guess, maybe? nah probably not. It meant the tank (68L) @ $80-$90 per fill lasted about 330KM heh.
i couldn't afford it either, so i bought a Rio lol
traffic around Melbourne is pretty insane, we have 'one of' the highest cars per capita ratios in the world, along with the US, but Melbourne is the second biggest (by a fraction) city in Australia and is full of fuel-draining situations! As a comparison, my V8 gets 10.5L/100 on the highway.
Yeah i never bought the Ford for economy as you can imagine, it's a barrel of fun though.
Anyway as i'm a very pictorial type of person, here are some more for anyone who cares. We gave the car its first real wash this afternoon, proper hand wash with microfibre cloths etc, hand dried, windows cleaned inside and out to remove the stains from the tinting done a week or so ago, and make it sparkle. Then did the tyre black.
good old Kingswoods.. i miss seeing them thundering around Calder Park back in the 90's, smashing each other to pieces
My mum is an artist and i paid her to do a painting of the Rio for us. She's painted many of my other cars over the years and she gets better each time. I'm still pretty gobsmacked by her work. I don't have the painting here yet but here is a photo dad just took and messaged to me of the finished product.
EDIT: pic isn't complete yet actually, she hasn't put the tail pipe on, so will update when that's done.
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