4WD and turbo engines galore on Kia's anticipated GT. Yours from under £32k

Remember the Stinger? Kia’s GT with rear-wheel drive? That’s the one. Kia has now revealed the specs and most importantly, the price, which starts at £31,995 when it goes on sale on January 1 next year.

There will be five different variants, with three trims – GT-Line, GT-Line S and GT-S – with a choice of three turbocharged engines. Top of the range will be the GT-S with a twin-turbo 365bhp 3.3-litre V6 engine, a 0-60mph time of just 4.7 seconds and a top speed of 168mph. This will set you back £40,495.

GT-Line and GT-Line S both get the choice of a 244bhp 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, or a 197bhp 2.2-litre diesel, that latter motor claiming up to 50.4mpg and giving the GT a claimed touring range of more than 600 miles. All models get an eight-speed auto ‘box with flappy paddles plus rear-wheel drive.

Details inside include an eight-inch touchscreen, Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, and a nine-speaker premium sound system.

Some context. A BMW 4 Series Gran Coupe starts from £33k (the 420i Sport with just over 180bhp) against the Kia’s sub-£32k starting price. Move up to the top of the range Stinger GT-S (at £40k), and an equivalent BMW 4 GC (the 440i M Sport) costs over £45k.

“It’s not razor-sharp (nor’s a 4 Series unless it’s an M4, and they don’t do an M4 in the GC body) but it’s game and dignified,” explained TG’s Paul Horrell on the first drive of the Stinger. “Doesn’t feel out of its depth…”

You can read the rest of our first drive review here.

So, BMW or Kia - which gets your online vote?

You can lease a 2017 Genny G80 ($50k car) for $359/mo. Hard numbers like residuals and such are for cars without manufacturer specials. When Kia tosses a few grand on the hood to move the units and/or subsidizes the residual/MF, the lease prices come down fast.

I can actually buy a Kia Stinger GT S now, right?
You can, for the sum of £40,495. For that you get an enormous amount of equipment, and a 365bhp bi-turbo V6 engine. So it’s more powerful and £5,000 cheaper than the current sports saloon bridesmaids. We’re talking Audi S5 Sportback, BMW 440i Gran Coupe (both of which were Kia’s performance and handling benchmarks). In the same ballpark, you’ve got the best V6-powered sporty saloon car out there too: the 375bhp Jaguar XE S.

There are four-cylinder petrol and diesel Stingers too, but ‘S’ means V6. It’s the one you’re most interested in, isn’t it?

Last time we were presented with a Stinger GT S, it was confined to that racetrack in Germany, wasn’t available for order, and was a pre-production car. This time, we’ve got a right-hand drive UK-spec Stinger, (albeit in Mallorca), in showroom trim, and the virtual order books are open.

Our early drive already explained the interior is fundamentally sorted (spot on driving position, tastefully put together), but now specs have been finalised we know the equipment levels are faintly spectacular. Stinger GT S models get LED lights, Brembo brakes, heated and cooled seats plus a heated steering wheel, adaptive cruise control with lane assist, a 7in toushcreen with Apple and Android mirroring, an electric tailgate, adaptive suspension… it’s absolutely loaded. You try getting that much kit on a German car for forty grand.

Okay, I can buy one, and it’ll be good value. Should I buy one?
If I’m permitted to swerve the question like a textbook politician, then bear in mind Kia doesn’t actually think it’ll sell many of these things. Annual sales target for 2018? 1,800 cars in the UK. Europe as a whole will only account for between seven and ten per cent of Stinger sales. The USA and Far East is where the Stinger’s audience awaits.

This is a classic ‘brand-builder’. The Stinger will sell in tiny handfuls, and it’ll be a rarer sight in Europe than a hybrid hypercar. But when you do see one, it’ll probably turn your head, and just having one in the showroom or on the website when you’re browsing for a new supermini or crossover might just tip you towards taking Kia a bit more seriously. Because it’s supposed to have pedigree, see. Which means we should get on with seeing if the most powerful, fastest Kia ever is any good.

Rattle off some numbers then…
Your 365bhp is abetted by 376lb ft of torque, which lasts from a low’n’lazy 1,300rpm right through to 4,500rpm. The 3.3-litre V6 only revs to 6,250rpm, but the redline is cheekily rated at 6,500rpm on the tacho. It’ll crack 0-62mph in a BMW 440i-matching 5.1 seconds, and tops out at 167mph.

The V6 drives via eight automatic gears - there’s no manual option - and even the paddles only override the auto-shifting for ten seconds. Because supposedly, American and Korean buyers only click a paddle once in a blue moon, for a quick overtake perhaps. Only Europeans like to take full control, we’re told. Are we sure? Hmmm.

What’s it actually like on the road?
The Stinger suffers from a phenomenon we shall call Mode Overload. Or maybe OverMode. Kia’s very proud of the many settings you can choose from, but there’s not a massive amount of difference between the five mood swings.

Comfort is the standard default. It’s not very interesting. Eco dulls the throttle and gives the gearbox narcolepsy. ‘Smart’ supposedly adapts to your driving style. If you have a sporty driving style, you might as well twist the knob towards Sport, which adds fake noise, stiffer suspension and slightly heavier steering. Sport Plus keeps all of that on and switches the traction control off.

I spent pretty much all my time in Sport, putting up with the gloopier weight of the steering to have the fizzier powertrain and tighter body control. It’s supposed to be a sports saloon anyway, and the character change between modes is nowhere near as bipolar as, say, a Mercedes-AMG C43.

Settled into Sport Mode, the Stinger sets about pleasantly surprising you. It steers accurately, and the variable ratio set-up isn’t so stupidly quick that the front tyres get caught out every time you pour it into a corner. Looking at you, C43.

There’s a pleasant balance to the chassis, which manages the critical trick of hiding its weight without detaching you from what’s going on at the wheels. It floats a little if you’re bounding over crests, but the suspension tidies up the movements professionally and there’s a lot less body roll than you’d expect for such a sizeable barge. The Brembo brakes aren’t brimming with precision, but they’re abuse-absorbing, and if you’re going to hustle the Stinger, it’s reassuring to know the stoppers aren’t made from the chocolate wafers BMW M Sport discs are.

It looks quite big and lardy.
On the road, the Stinger doesn’t just hide its weight, it also shrinks usefully. It feels no bigger or more cumbersome than a 4 Series. It cruises extremely quietly. And it feels quick too. The V6 is more on the Audi S4 end of the charisma scale than up there with the raucous C43, but it delivers power with a broad, stout linearity, and the eight gear ratios are chosen cleverly. Turbo lag? Not a problem.

The gearbox is less impressive. The changes, manual or automated, just aren’t that quick, and because you’re denied a true manual mode, it’ll get properly flustered if your paddleshift override disagrees with its opinion of what gear to pick next. It always auto upchanges at the (fake) redline, and if you accidentally trigger the lockdown button you might as well stick the hazards on while the transmission fumbles for the shortest gear possible.

But it’s credible? An actual sports saloon, not a cruise liner with red brake calipers?
Yes, albeit one that feels far more at home living up to the ‘GT’ part of its name than trying to ram its Nürburgring honing down your throat. But it’s a sorted road car, on the whole. Not a machine you’d set a 5am Sunday alarm call to thrash, but one you might come off the motorway a junction early in a couple of times a week, just to hustle it cross-country. For a first effort in a mighty competitive class, the Stinger deserves credit. Best of all, it actually manages to feel like a lot of car for £40k.

Nitpick this car all you want, but the Stinger was never meant to be a sports car. It is a GT car. It is meant to be a comfortable sporty car. Still, I seem to remember more than a few M-B cars having terrible ride quality, BMWs having lifeless steering and Audis having excessive understeer. The Stinger clearly punches above its weight and if you are looking for something with more performance but don't want to spend much more money, the G70 will be smaller, lighter, faster and more dynamic. Mission accomplished for Kia.

The CTS is one of the most dynamic sedans in the mid-size luxury segment. Steering is direct; the front wheels respond immediately to inputs, but some of our editors feel that the steering effort is artificially heavy no matter which driving mode is selected. Nonetheless, turn-in is wonderfully sharp, and the CTS seems to hunker down through corners. Body roll is well controlled, and even in aggressive maneuvers, the CTS remains composed and unruffled.

The performance-tuned suspension doesn’t have the adjustable factor of the Hellcat’s or the SRT 392 Charger’s but is never jouncy in the middle of travel and delivers good body control without beating up its occupants. There’s almost no side-to-side head toss, even on undulating, high-crown roads. The Scat Pack’s electrically boosted steering doesn’t give up much to the Hellcat’s hydraulically boosted setup; turn-in is quick yet nicely weighted with good on-center feel, and the car goes where it’s pointed with precision.

Nationally, Kia is offering the 255 hp Stinger 2.0 turbo from $299 for 36 months with $2,999 due at signing. The deal includes an allowance of 12,000 miles per year, which is pretty standard for Kia.

Based on an effective cost of $382/month, we consider this a pretty good deal given the vehicle’s MSRP of $32,800. Program bulletins show the deal includes an impressive $4,800 in factory lease discounts.

This means the base model Stinger is actually cheaper to lease than Chevy Camaro with the 2.0T even though the Kia has a sticker price that is $5000 more. But the news gets better, apparently, the higher up you go on the Stinger trim level, the more money Kia puts on the hood to make the lease competitive.At the top of the range, the all-wheel drive Stinger GT2 benefits from a whopping $6,800 in lease cash, something we consider incredibly surprising. In contrast, buying a Stinger isn’t nearly as attractive, at least for now.