GAME TIME. It’s you and me, walking through a new-car parking lot. You want an SUV. Not just any SUV, but the theoretical maximum amount of SUV you can get for your dollar. You don’t care about brand. You are one dead-eyed materialist. That’s why we’ve come to Kia.
Let’s be clearheaded: As much as car companies would like you to believe the products and brands are all different and special, they are, functionally, mostly not, at least insofar as most consumers would exercise them. Really, dude, is a car that goes to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds better than one that goes in 4.0? You are never going to…I mean, what kind of soulless monstrosity are you?
The truth is, vast forces are at work making cars of the same function and same price virtually the same car.
Some are technical. The regimes of federal crash-testing and fuel-economy standards tend to flatten design opportunities, as does the unyielding pressure for lower weight and drag.
Some causes are merely the vulgar work of industrial capitalism: supply and demand, supplier costs, labor and transportation.
The point is, once you see through the matrix, mass-market cars are revealed as commodities, sourced from one or another without a big difference in intrinsic value and function.
Rumble Seat: 2016 Kia Sorento
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The 2016 Kia Sorento has enough bells and whistles to impress even an SUV brand snob. WSJ’s Dan Neil discusses. Photo: Kia
Now, while other car brands might flee at such a description, Kia really has embraced being a commodity, celebrated it even, much the way Pabst Blue Ribbon became weirdly chic. Kias are the happy widget.
To begin at the beginning: The thing that comes in new car windows is called a Monroney label, or sticker, named after Sen. Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, from back when Oklahoma had Democrats. The Monroney is, in fact, a missive from various federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The 2016 Kia Sorento SXL 2.0T, says the EPA, gets 22 miles per gallon combined, which pencils out to an estimated $2,050 a year in fuel costs.
The label also lists, helpfully, the fuel cost per 100 miles, which is 4.5 gallons. Like the European standard of liters per 100 kilometers, gallons per 100 miles is a smarter, more dispositive way to calculate fuel economy, but I’ll tilt at that windmill another time.
The EPA has also done a little comparison-shopping for you, noting that vehicles in the “small SUV” class range from 17 to 33 mpg.