Months ago when I tested the new remarkable Kia Sorento, I knew it was time to dispose of my C! Fastfleet Ford Focus Sport and graduate to a more substantial vehicle. With the amount of road trips that I go on, a bigger car was a necessity as much as a want.

After a few weeks of mulling over it, I placed an order for the diesel variant with all the bells and whistles. Kia Philippines informed me that it was going to take a couple of months for the unit to arrive. But because of my excitement, I decided to sell the Focus a wee bit early and sacrifice not having a car until my new one arrived. After a long wait, Kia informed me that my order was going to be delayed by another month due to further calibration of the powerful diesel R engine to accommodate our local barely Euro II fuel combined with a massive worldwide backlog for the new variant. So I waited again, anxiously, for another month. The great news was, I had a 2008 Kia Sorento Diesel support unit on loan. So it wouldn’t have been so bad to wait another month having a car to use during the waiting period.

But unfortunately, after that long wait, again, they told me it was going to be delayed for another 3 months as they were still having trouble configuring the car to be able to use our diesel. I was frustrated! I could no longer wait. There was absolutely no way that I could reasonably wait any further. I needed a car badly! It was still difficult to be relying on a borrowed car, so I went to check out other options that Kia had.

As I arrived at the manufacturer’s office, they had two cars lined up for me. One was the Kia Forte sedan and the other was the 2-door variant, the Kia Forte Koup. I test drove both and fell in love with the Forte Koup. Quite funny that I ended up with a 2-door coupé when I wanted to get an SUV before that.

After severl weeks of purchasing my car, we flew to Korea to test drive what I was going to originally get, the all new Kia Sorento Diesel. We get to Korea, and it is freezing cold. It was -8°C below zero! Kevin started to worry about the next day’s program, if it was this cold, how were we going to shoot it properly? He was concerned that the cameras may not function well under those conditions! I stopped worrying by having a satisfying Japanese set dinner at the hotel, while Kevin chose the Chinese set. The food was sensational!

The next day started at 5 am and we switched to work mode. We grabbed a quick bite then were picked up by the assistant manager of the Kia Asia Pacific team Jae Cho. Packed with all our camera equipment, he drove us to the largest Kia plant in Korea in Hwasung which is southwest of Seoul. When we were given the grand tour of the Hwasung Plant, we were impressed by the size of the facility, 425 acres! Equipped with state of the art manufacturing processes and machine tools, they can produce 2,400 cars a day and as much as 600,000 cars a year. The plant builds Kia’s current Philippine models as well as other models for domestic and export markets. I never really appreciated the hard work and time it takes in producing one car. Seeing them all in the assembly line made me more appreciative of my Koup and all cars in general.

After seeing the cars being assembled, we were taken to test drive the Sorento. They have several test tracks with different road surfaces including a four lane high speed oval track four kilometers long with 40 degree banked curves where tests cars can safely corner and lap at 250 km/h. I witnessed them testing the cars in real-world conditions to achieve the optimum quality and reliability. We lapped the track at a consistent 180km/h and there was absolutely no drama, in fact the Sorento CRD is erringly silent and effortless. I asked the test driver why Kia forced a speed limiter at 190 km/h even if it could easily achieve 220 km/h in present Philippine-spec trim, he simply looked at me and said, “yes, but it’s an everyday SUV, no need to go faster.” As he said that, I could already see Kevin doing some calculations in his head on how to disable the limiter and make some minor modifications to safely achieve higher attainable speeds…boys will be boys…

We were only allowed to test drive in one track and unfortunately it wasn’t the high speed track. Apparently, you need a special license to be able to drive in that particular one. Both Kevin and I got to experience the silky smooth but very powerful drive of the Diesel Sorento. It’s new heavily revised 2.2 liter engine lifted from the Hyundai Santa Fe, now produces a very healthy best-in-class 190bhp @ 3800 rpm with gasoline-V8-like 322 lb.-ft of torque from 1800 to 2500 rpm. The Philippine version lost a bit of power, about 4bhp, due to the required recalibration. The quieter engine produces much more power, greater torque, less emissions and is still more fuel efficient than the previous engine. The Sorento CRDi is so easy to drive with so much power at your control, it felt like I was driving a 4.0 liter V6. In fact I had an old Ford SportTrac and this Kia would definitely run circles around it with better everything from handling, brakes, steering and acceleration, and still get better fuel economy than my old Ford Focus too!

The new Sorento is leagues better than the old one it replaces, in every possible way, it’s also bigger and lighter too. The differences are more profound for me since I had just come fresh from driving the old model for almost a month. The new Sorento feels like a sophisticated European SUV rather than a decade old truck. Again, I was impressed by Kia’s premium level of quality. Twenty-first century buyer’s demands are satisfied with the 7-seater Sorento as an alternative to an MPV. Without it being too aggressive looking, it stands on its own with its sleek and sophisticated Peter Schreyer design. Essentially the CRDi variant of the Sorento has all the equipment of the 2.4 liter gasoline version but with a more frugal yet stronger engine with even more standard equipment like leather seats and higher spec audio systems. The Deluxe EX version comes with even more standard equipment.

After doing our testing and shooting, we were driven by a professional test driver around the high speed track and this is where I was able to feel the power and high speed stability of the Sorento. It was personally my first time on a track such as this. I would have wanted to drive on this track if only they permitted us, but they said they had strict rules and regulations to follow, and allowing us to drive was a no-no. So off we went, and at some point, Kevin got off to shoot from outside while I shot from inside the car. Everything was going smoothly until a few minutes later, we were stopped by security. They spoke to the driver in Korean, but I could sense that something was wrong. Apparently, all the other test drivers were complaining about a foreigner with a 500 mm lens taking pictures in the track. Other drivers were testing cars that weren’t out in the market yet, one being the 2011 Kia Sportage, so they were freaking out thinking we were there to spy on them! This was too funny! We went to pick up Kevin and told him what happened, and he said he was only taking pictures of the Sorento. We were professionals, we knew common etiquette.

So we were done, and off to lunch we went. Our host Jae took us to a restaurant in the area. Pretty much a hole in the wall type of place, nothing fancy but obviously a typical Korean eatery. The dining area had Korean floor style tables with cushions as seats, and warmed floors. The floors had coil insulators built in, and it is typical in Korean houses to keep them warm during the winter. Jae ordered for us, since we couldn’t read the menu. He wanted us to experience real Korean specialties. I asked him what the specialties were, and he said tofu. Tofu? Uh-oh! Kevin was already cringing. This meal might me a disaster! But we were gung ho to try anything so we patiently waited for our food to arrive.

Before our order arrived, Jae got a phone call. It was someone from the plant telling him to check Kevin’s camera to see if he took pictures of the other cars. So Kevin showed them that we were really only photographing the Sorento and not the rest of the cars. After Jae browsed through Kevin’s camera and found nothing, we could finally start eating!

First was cold silken tofu with a soy-chili paste sauce. The cold tofu went really well with the spicy sauce. We both enjoyed it very much. So at that point I started to worry less about Kevin not being satisfied with the meal.

Then came the rest of the meal. Banchan, which are small dishes of food served with cooked rice, was set in the middle of the table to be shared. At the center was our main course, it was a mushroom, tofu and seafood hotpot. Korea is a peninsula, surrounded by water to the East, west, and south. So it came as no surprise that our dish consisted of different kinds of mushrooms, vegetables, tofu, clams, scallops, prawns, crabs, octopus, fish and two ingredients we weren’t sure of. He just kept saying it was from the fish. Of course, being the naughty foodie that I am, I knew what they were but I wanted Kevin to try them without telling him what they were. If I told him what they were beforehand, there was no chance that he would even put them on his plate!

So he tries them both and is truly disgusted! But of course, he tries not to show the host how much he wanted to spit them out and wring my neck for making him eat it. I have never heard Kevin speak as much Tagalog in my life, as I did during that short period of lunch. He complained and kept muttering under his breath how gross it tasted. Right after he ate it, I told him that he just ate a fish egg sac and some sort of sea slug. I thought he was going to hurl! And then I had to tell him that I didn’t swallow but discreetly spat out the slug. I couldn’t stop laughing but I had to give it to him for being such a trooper. Even Jae admitted that he doesn’t like the stuff! The slug was worse than the fish egg sac. It looked like the abdomen of an insect and had a crunchy but soggy texture, and when you bite into it, liquid squirts out. Doesn't that sound extremely disgusting?

Done with lunch, now off we went to the Kia Headquarters to meet with the heads. We met with the top brass, Brandon Yea (EVP Middle East, Africa/Asia Pacific Business Division), John Kim (Head of the Asia-Pacific team), and the very entertaining and informative Michael Choo (International Communications Manager) who took us out to a fantastic Korean barbecue dinner that night. After a couple of hours of boardroom presentations and dialogue I can confidently tell you that Kia has an incredible line-up of near future products that will have the entire car industry working even harder to compete. The Giant of Hyundai and Kia are far no longer the up and coming, they are fast becoming the force to be reckoned with. And I still want my new Sorento CRDi!

+ : Best i class, outstanding engine, very stylish, hard to beat total solution
− : Speed limited, LED rear lights not standard, hidden exhaust pipes

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