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Home / The Stinger GT – a car to watch out in 2018
The Stinger GT – a car to watch out in 2018
2018-01-11Staff Report 2 Staff Reporter This is the Kia Stinger GT, which was released in Europe in November 2016 and is set for worldwide release this year. The stinger has tongues wagging, because it is purposefully aimed at giving fierce competition to the likes of the BMW 4 and 6 Series, the Porsche Panamera, and the Audi S5 Sportback. The Kia Stinger GT has a 3,3-litre V6 engine mated to an 8-speed gearbox and unleashes a whooping 272.18 Kilowatts, which is higher than the Audi S5 260 kW, the Porsche Panamera RWD V6 at 246 kW and the BMW440i, 240 kW. Since the car is competing with the top names on the market, Kia also introduced the Stinger GT2, the top of the range with same engine but with additional fancy add-ons. But the review thus far have been mixed, the stinger get dismissed for its lack of engine sophistication and absence of interior luxury. Audi and BMW offer opulence, leather and a general feel of expensive materials while the Stinger’ interior was found to be wanting with too much of a plastic feel and look on the inside. Of course, all the reviews pointed out that the Stinger GT could never be compared to the Porsche Panamera, because the Porsche simply just offers opulence that only multimillionaires would truly appreciate. And perhaps that is okay, because the Stinger GT is not for millionaires but for working motorists who want to drive big engine cars on their meagre budgets, with normal vehicle financing from a bank. Engineering wise the Kia Stinger GT was also found to be a little lacking, it does not have all the electronic gadgets that the other cars have to run and corner faster and safer on the road. Despite the huge power output, on real roads the Stinger GT was found to be slower and noisy, according to some reviews, because of the absence of fancy technological gadgets on German cars. Some petty reviewers even complained that the roar of the Stinger GT exhaust notes is so low, making it incomparable to the one on the Audi or the BMW. That also is fine. You see the Stinger GT will without doubt have its own cult of followers. For starters, the Stinger GT gains massive points for its price: to buy the top of the range Kia Stinger GT2, a person would only need about N$800,000 to drive the car from the showroom dealership. Even better is the fact that the Stinger base model, which is a 2-litre, also packs a mean 183kW in power, which one can buy at the decent price of just about N$600,000, which is a bargain for a car in that market. All the other German cars are only available to those who can access N$1,1 million, and could go as far as far as N$2,3 million when one has added on the extra features on the cars. The Stinger GT does not need extra or optional features, as all features come fitted as standard for each model variation. Therefore, for people who enjoy sheer speed, and do not have the money to afford the fancy seats, leather interior with fancy buttons, in the German cars, the Stinger GT is likely to be the choice car in 2018. Albert Biermann, the former vice president of engineering at BMW’s M GmbH, who is now at the helm of Hyundai-Kia’s vehicle testing and high-performance development group, designed the Kia Stinger. 2018-01-11Staff Report 2
