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-   -   Kia Carens midsize MPV unveiled (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/218963-kia-carens-midsize-mpv-unveiled-12.html)

This looks like Kia has borrowed a lot of inspiration from Maruti Ertiga/XL6.

Absolutely lacklustre, IMHO.

This MPV is designed to look like a SUV from ground up. It has an SUV like stance, proportions, (relatively) high seating, a raised bonnet and looks neat from all angles. BRV was an ugly contraption, which was a poor attempt in converting a cheap, contraption of an MPV named Mobilio, into an 'SUV' by adding plastic claddings.

Carens actually manages to look good. They seem to have taken the outer design "inspiration" entirely from BMW X3, just advanced the A pillars by a few inches to increase the cabin length to accommodate the third row. Neat job, I would say!

So the Korean sisters seem to have fixed their design targets: Hyundai will make the outer body getting "inspired" by Audi design language and Kia will make the outer body getting "inspired" from the BMW design language, and everything inside the cars will be shared stuff, including engine, gearboxes, batteries, HU, etc. Ethics apart, not a bad business strategy, I would say. :D

Not to forget the trapezoidal Hyundai grill with horizontal slats is inspired from the Audi grill and the 'tiger nose" grill of Kia is nothing but a BMW 'kidney' grill connected by a bridge. rl:

Kia has deliberately left out the 'tiger nose' grill this time as the tiger nose on Carens will be a dead giveaway of its design inspirations and might have ended up receiving a legal notice from BMW!

@Mods: kindly merge this with my previous post. Thanks.

It could be due to the fact that the 2nd row is lower set to the floor compared to XL6? Note that Carens will have the tumble down second row seats, and to facilitate that, they may have reduced the seatback height. XL6 middle row does not tumble and hence can have large proper sized chairs. It would be interesting to compare this with the Alcazar second row.

Going by the pictures, it should be OK even for a 6 footer. Only a proper interior review will reveal this fact. Lets wait for the super tall BHPians to sit in the second row and click some pictures when they can ;)

IMHO, this is, to put it mildly, a confused design. Looks like 3 different cars to me. The front, rear and the side don't seem to have any harmony. If anything, i like how it looks from the front. Looks fairly clean and flowing. But the less said about the rear and the side profile, the better.

But i guess it's a Kia. So will sell well, regardless :-)

Bro, I did not say that Harrier/Safari is the best/safest. I have my fair bit of disappointment and frustration against Harrier/Safari. So let us not deviate from the topic "KIA CARENS".

Please note that I also mentioned that Kia has a winner (Carens) in hand if it is launched at the right price. And regarding my "pity Indians" statement, my point was totally different from what you mean here. Anyway, let us not delve deep.

For now, Carens will be hit if priced right.

I'm surprised to see people care about and comment on the looks so much. This is not a halo product or sports car, it's a mass market soccer mom 7 seater van type car. All of its competition looks more or less similar, as the form factor dictates. I don't see much reason in picking between 7 seaters on the basis of looks, and most people won't. It'll sell if it offers value for people, if the look and feel inside is nice, if the mileage is good, if the space is adequate for people who want to travel with 6-7 people aboard.

And most likely it'll be good on those counts and sell well. I venture a thought experiment here: Any average person who doesn't take much interest in cars will say that all the SUV-style cars sold in India between 10 lakhs and 30 lakhs look more or less alike (except the obvious retro boxy ones). When you're sitting inside a car, you can't see what it looks like. I can see logic behind someone having specific critiques for the design of the new Mustang or new Z4, but not for this, at all.

I agree to the point you have madelol:. It would have been good if the front looks were similar to Seltos. As usual, Kia has loaded it with features to lure its customers. If Toyota can get some bits from Kia, I am sure Innova Crysta will be hot cake.

You are right, it looks really small. Reminds me of the Qualis. Mark this post, when this becomes a superhit, like the Qualis I can gloat.:)

I wish some agency starts testing the quality of the engines, reliability and mechanical quality of cars. It will be interesting to see which car is on the top and the bottom. The results will be exactly the opposite of Global ncap ratings.

Nowadays, people only want to speak about safety and nothing else. A car is related to many variables, not just safety.

All cars sold in India after 2017 meets new Indian govt safety protocol, So for whom do they (manufacturers) need to prove? They don't need to prove anything to a private agency like Global ncap. If your car doesn't have anything other than build quality you need these gimmick ratings to sell the car.

The 5 star champions are equipped with poor quality engines and unreliable mechanicals. It's better to buy/recommend a 2-3 star car with 5 star engine instead of a 5 star car with 0 star engine with pathetic reliability.

https://carbuzz.com/news/former-bmw-...-of-kia-design

Kia had hired several BMW designers in the past - Albert Bierman, Karim Habib. Peter Schreyer was a long term Chief Design Officer. So the influence is very obvious and for good.

Yeah, It's small, They are 250/65 R16

Agree, providing safety feature and advertising them is good, they should be standard all across, but it will not make much impact on ground level as they need to be supported by good build quality and platform which offers structural integrity. You can check recent example of Hyundai Tuscon crash test failure ( 3rd gen ), zero rating but it had two airbags.

From what i understand

1. This is a loaded car which can seat 6 people in comfort (including third row)
2. Has all the safety features and gizmos
3. With above two points this will be priced on par with Safari and XUV. Starting pointing of base model may overlap with top end of Marazzo.

It really needed a bigger grill to look good. Looks too insipid. Maybe with bigger wheels, the side profile might change a bit. Even the wheel wells are smaller. I always thought it was based on Sonet for some reason before. Doesnt really look like its based on Seltos. Even the lower trim Seltos looks plain.

Not sure how much more of a premium you need to pay over the Ertiga for this boring car.

The front is livable (at least in the real-life image posted somewhere above in this thread). It's the back which is really weird and disappointing. The side is okay for an MPV, the wheel (although small) is not Toyota Qualis-like at all and is on par with competition IMHO. Overall, easily the best looking MPV in the market.
The choice of available colors is another disappointment, although this is quite subjective.