2001 Kia Spectra...Continued

Once out on the highway it became apparent that the Spectra is one tight, quiet car. The interior has nice appointments, good ergonomic design, and nice tactile sensations from switchgear and trim. It has a comfortable ride, stable and predictable handling, good steering feel and adequate power. This is a nice highway car.

The 1.8L DOHC engine is a Kia design, and produces 125 HP at 6000 RPM. It produces 108 ft-lbs of torque at 4500 RPM which leaves a decent power curve for the car. It felt good and sounded decent through the entire RPM range. It is certainly within class limits.

The automatic transmission would not be the preferred choice with this car. The manual is much better at extracting the available power thanks to gear ratio differences between it and the automatic. The clutch in the manual transmission cars has hydraulic actuation which provides a light clutch pedal feel. The five speed shifter was quite easy to use.

We spent a couple of hours at the Bragg-Smith Advanced Driving School, where Kia turned us loose with a couple of modified cars and a few regular production cars. We had a chance to sample some lightly modified Spectras at the Spring Mountain Motorsports track (a 2.2 mile road course). Kia is hoping that the California import scene picks up on the Spectra as a suitable tuner car and is working on providing dealer installed performance parts. What better place to show off your ambitions than a race track.

One thing Kia mentioned earlier in the day is that Lotus had a hand in developing the Spectraās suspension. That would be put to the test on the track. One of the nice ergonomic touches of the Spectra is that the tachometer has its redline at the top of needle travel. Thatās important on a race track, especially with an unfamiliar car.

The Spectras responded nicely to the rough treatment. Regular road testing can be fun, but it takes guts to let a bunch of crazy journalists loose on a track with your cars, and Kia did. The track time was appreciated and helped show that the Spectra was durable.

The modified Spectras had new free flow air filter and exhaust, springs, wheels and tires. The HP improvement was noticeable, but the handling improvements over the base model were quite evident. Not that the base model was bad, itās just that with minimal improvements it gets much better. It would have been nice if Kia had had a Spectra ready with a supercharger kit. They are working on that, and it wouldāve been fun on the track.

Fortunately, a manual car was available for the drive back to Las Vegas. It was nice. Good gear ratios and a quiet car combined for easy driving and good fuel economy. The Spectra is rated at 23 MPG city / 29 MPG highway for the manual transmission and 22 MPG city / 32 MPG highway for the automatic (well there is a reason for the automatic).