This weekend, a friend of mine who I used to work with over at Kia Motors in Irvine, CA got a chance to take the new Stinger GT home for a few days. He sent me a picture and immediately I went to go check it out. I've seen a couple around the Orange County area but never thought I would get to try driving one, which I was extremely excited about considering all of the great press it's gotten in the past several months.http://ift.tt/2teclY3 the car my friend had was the top of the line, 365HP twin turbo V6 with AWD. I got into the car and realized how comfortable the car was. I didn't try the back seats, but the front seats were extremely comfortable and roomy. The perforated leather felt really nice to touch and the seat had adjustable side bolsters, which were awesome. Seating position felt really low, but might've just been the seat height my seat was set to.Pushed the start button and head a pretty decent sounding rumble, which I'm not sure was real or artificial. One thing that bugged me was that it sounded mean on the inside, but really dinky from outside of the car. I started backing up, and realized I completely forgot about the "bird's-eye view" camera that Kia has on a lot of their cars. The infotainment screen is pretty big, so half of it is a regular back up camera, and the other half shows basically an overhead view of the car to see what's around you. This was extremely helpful in the Sedona minivan.I started driving off and immediately felt a bit of what the car was capable of. Slowly drove out of the neighborhood onto the main streets and put the car into sport mode. I gave it some gas and all I could say was "wow...". I think I said it like 5 times within the first couple minutes of driving it. Apparently it does 0-60 in 4.9 seconds, which amazed me considering it's a full size sedan from Kia. It felt really quick especially with the AWD system, and did pretty well when cornering harder than usual. I didn't go all out considering I was still on public roads.The transmission was pretty nice as well. I used paddle shifting most of the time to have some fun, but the automatic system did a great job for when I just wanted to cruise and had 8 gears to work with. Of course the downside is that we all wished it would come with a manual transmission, but it makes sense with Kia's target market for this car.Unfortunately didn't get a chance to try out the infotainment system too much with the radio or any other gadgets. I do know it has active cruise control though! It also has the option of automatically shutting off the engine at stoplights.ProsExtremely capable in terms of performanceDefinitely comfortable, perfect as fun DD. Nice interiorLooks amazing IMO. Turned heads but not sure if people knew what it was or just because it looked coolAwesome AND handy tech from what I saw and triedConsObviously no manual optionPretty pricey for highest trim, supposedly will sit right below $50kFake engine noise, sounds like a Camry from outsideNot sure if V6 model comes in RWD? Would be nice for people to have the option between RWD/AWD via /r/cars http://ift.tt/2rV50IZ
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