Hervey Bay Gossip

Each week as part of the Hervey Bay Gossip we bring you a motoring review and that has led to a new project that you can see developing over at Aussie Motoring. As part of that project we’re constantly looking at the motoring industry around the world and that has proved to be very interesting.

One of the factors that make it so interesting is the way motoring writers from different countries see the same vehicle. It becomes quite obvious that national influences can creep into a review and have quite an impact on how a writer sees a vehicle.

The Kia Rio is one car that seems to be influenced by nationality of the reviewer.

Here in Australia small cars have been been part of the industry forever. Many of us oldies cut our driving teeth on Leyland Minis so to us small cars are quite acceptable and when a motoring writer here in Australia reviews a small car he or she take it as it comes. Two Australian reviews of the Kia Rio that we saw were quite positive.

But in America, home of the big car, things can be quite different. A motoring writer in the US who wrote a review on the Kia Rio spent time complaining that the base model did not come equipped with power windows.

Instead of power windows, it had the hand-crank style. Who knew they still made those?

He also did not like the fact that the base model lacked central locking, power operated mirrors and power steering and even went so far as to question the marketing wisdom of the manufacturer.

Well all I can say is that he was testing the base model and Kia is making money selling their cars while American manufacturers are busy closing plants because their cars are not selling.

Personally, after having a power operated window fail and gracefully slide down into the door some distance from home and with storms loomimg (and pay $250 for the repair) I’ll happily settle for a hand cranked window any day - that’s an absolute luxury compared to the sliding windows that came with the first Mini.

And if you do want to read the review on the Kia Rio perhaps you should start here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 at 5:13 am and is filed under Motoring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.