Sean O'Grady
The lengths some car-makers will go to to make a point - Morocco, in fact. The brand in question is Kia and the point being made is that their cars are, if I may put things in colloquial terms, well hard.
So tough are their 4x4s that they will survive being driven across sand dunes in the Sahara by an idiot like me. They were almost right - but the fault was not Kia's.
Let me explain...
The Sorento is tough and the recently facelifted Kia 4x4 cheerfully suffered the roughest roads in the Maghreb. Crossing the Atlas Mountains on a mule track for three hours was, in truth, more a test of human than driver. Those of us with a slight tendency to vertigo weren't delighted at the sheer drops from such narrow, rutted roads but the greatest hazard was the huge volume of tourist traffic coming in the opposite direction and with precious little room to pass.
Radio contact between the various mule-track users was the answer.
I got two punctures in quick succession on this track, which I'd like to think wasn't my fault, as the only way it could be the driver's fault is if he's been going too fast, which I wasn't (first and second gear all the way). To be fair to Kia, they insisted that the cars we used were virtually identical to those you'd drive out of the showroom so they had standard Hankook road tyres. In which case, maybe it wasn't such a bad performance (no other car had this trouble).
Then we made it into the Big Sand. Again, this was a surprisingly crowded environment, more like Piccadilly Circus than a scene from "Lawrence of Arabia" (which, along with most Hollywood Biblical/Mummy/ Laurentian epics, was filmed in southern Morocco).
What I took to be charming Touareg settlements were just that but planted for the benefit of tourists, as were the camels, the bright tents and the Men in Blue themselves. There isn't that much left in Morocco that can be said to be unexplored and authentic.
It has to be noted as well that those who make their living, mostly from tourism, on the edge of the Sahara tend to drive Land Rover Defenders; a few favour Land Rover's Spanish cousin, the Santana 4x4.
You'll also see all the usual Japanese SUV's such as Toyota's Land Cruiser, along with battered old-school Mercs as long-distance taxis and Peugeot 205 and Fiat Uno units working hard as petits taxis for the towns: but when it comes to seriously heavy desert duties it would seem only a Land Rover will do for Moroccans.
To much momentum
Maybe a Land Rover would have survived what happened next but I doubt it. Emboldened by the 4x4 expertise of my co-driver, I followed his instructions on how to get over a soft sand dune: power up to the crest of the hill and then just slide down the other side (which showed the driver had no expertise in the desert - Editor*).
Fine, except when we slid down the other side we had a little too much momentum and the front of the Kia smashed into the ground at the foot of the dune. We dislocated the radiator, though the engine was still running.
A couple of other Sorentos also had to be taken out of proceedings after similarly careless driving. So I'd agree that the Sorento is a lot tougher than you'd think and capable of much more abuse than it will encounter in its pampered Western life, but it is not invincible.
When you invite journalists to break cars - and this is the first one I've trashed - then you have to expect a little collateral damage to your reputation.
No longer dying
Having said that, though, a few words of praise. A decade ago Kia was, to all intents and purposes, dead in the water. It made mediocre-to-bad cars and went bankrupt. A victim of the great East Asian economic storm of 1998, like the rest of the Korean auto industry, it was flattened.
Kia was bought by Hyundai and then the brand set about renewing itself. It has done so with a degree of success and now nobody thinks of Kia as a dying brand.
The best recoveries in the motor industry are "product-led". It's hard to credit now but Volkswagen was nearly bust by the early 1970's by being over-reliant on the Beetle and a series of wacky spin-offs. Then it got serious and built the Passat, Polo and Golf and, if VW is back in the mire now, it has little to do with its cars.
That was the text-book, product-led recovery story.
Kia hasn't lived up to that standard but it has had its share of unexpected hits. There's the Kia Picanto,and the Sedona, now on its second generation, the big value-for-money seven-seater people-carrier. No Kia was ever the safest nor the most stylish vehicle and they used to depreciate something rotten in the UK, but you always got a lot for your money.
A little too dear
Nowadays Kia wants to nudge its products and its prices upmarket. Each successive model seems to be a little bit dearer than its predecessor. It's a little bit better too, but sometimes they still leave something to be desired.
The new Magentis, for example, is not going to be much of a challenger even to the Mondeo, let alone the increasingly ubiquitous German prestige makes, and one reason for that is that it's now a little too dear.
The same, I think, applies to the Sorento because so few people will pay upwards of £23 000 for a Kia, even if it is a match for the equivalent Toyota, Land Rover or Nissan.
The really important new Kia is the curiously named the C'eed. This is a huge leap in the firm's ambitions and it is firmly aimed at the centre of the market, up against the Golf, Astra, Focus and Mégane. It's built in Europe (Slovakia) and it's a neat-looking hatch that drives well (full driving impression next week).
Crucially, Kia has stopped copying Toyota and started copying Audi: that means quality materials from the same people who supply the big European groups. Sounds great. - The Independent, London
- The Sorento has already been launched in South Africa,
*For those uneducated in going where camels fear to tread, the correct way to navigate a dune is as fast as possible up the slope, tapping off sufficiently at the top to just break over the top with the nose pointing down.
First gear, low range (if you have it) and let the car's weight carry it down against engine braking. DO NOT TOUCH THE BRAKES- except perhaps very gently, just before you smash the radiator. - Editor