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By
EWAN KENNEDY
21 January 2008
Grand Carnival is a great name for a car, particularly one that’s
loaded to the gills with happy children, as happened to us last
week.
This Kia people mover is a large vehicle; at 5.13 metres it is
almost as long as Holden’s limo-class Caprice. The extensive
length means there's lots of space inside, with seating for eight
adults, two in front bucket seats; three in the second row, each
in their own bucket seat; and a further three in a bench seat at
the rear. All the seats have good legroom and are of a reasonable
width, but passengers in the rearmost seats will find themselves
sitting with their knees up as the floor is rather high.
Access to the rearmost seats isn’t too difficult for young
and agile travellers, others may find it a struggle.
The two passengers in the centre seats only get lap-sash safety
belts, everyone else has the greater safety of three-point belts.
Luggage space is excellent, even with all the seats in use. The
boot is very deep, partly because of the location of a small
temporary spare tyre underneath the vehicle, at the right-centre
of the cabin floor. A full sized flat tyre can’t be stored in
that area, but Kia supplies a plastic bag in which to store the
flat. It can then be stashed away somewhere inside.
When you are not using the rear seats of the Grand Carnival
they fold down into that deep recess in the base of the boot,
leaving a neat flat floor as they do so. The three seats in the
centre row double-fold forwards to further increase load space and
can be removed completely without too much of a hassle.
Power is supplied by a big twin-cam V6 engine. Displacing 3.8
litres, it produces up to 184 kW. Torque is a handy 343Nm at a
relatively low 3500rpm. Thanks to this modern engine using
variable valve timing the torque is nicely spread throughout the
range. There's plenty of power and the engine has a refined feel,
particularly at cruising speeds, that makes it very pleasant.
The engine drives the front wheels through a tiptronic-type
five speed automatic, there's no manual gearbox option. The
topline models have the addition of a tiptronic-type override
system on the automatic transmission.
Comfort is good on most road surfaces with a reasonable degree
of composure. Big bumps and corrugations do trouble it at times so
if you like to travel in the bush on holiday or weekend trips it
may be worth finding some rough roads during your initial test
drive.
Handling of this substantial people mover can at best be
described as adequate. At slow to moderate speeds it’s fine but
at anything higher it verges on being sloppy. Strong understeer
scrubs off speed and puts the Grand Carnival back on line if you
have been over ambitious. But only up to a certain extent, go far
too fast and you may be in serious trouble.
The sheer length of the Grand Carnival may make for parking
hassles when parallel parking at the kerb-side, but isn’t likely
to be a problem in off-street carparks as almost all have plenty
of length in their parking spots. Height is seldom going to be a
problem as the Grand Carnival is lower than most medium-sized
4WDs.
Build quality of the body is good, but we struck some areas
within the cabin that could have had a better finish. On the
whole, though, Kia's quality is improving all the time.
Kia also imports a standard model Carnival with a smaller V6
engine, at 2.7 litres. It misses out on some of the space inside
the Grand, though it’s not too bad. However, the boot is
significantly smaller.
The complete Kia Carnival range, with prices (excluding on-road
costs) is:
Carnival EX: $32,990 (manual), $35,490 (automatic)
Carnival EX-Safety: $37,290 (automatic)
Grand Carnival EX: $38,490 (automatic)
Grand Carnival EX-Safety: $40,290 (automatic)
Grand Carnival Premium: $44,490 (automatic)
Grand Carnival Platinum: $50,990 (automatic)
© Copyright
Marque Publishing Company
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