Kia Picanto

Our verdict

The Kia Picanto is a cheap small car. As in really cheap.Disposable motoring if you’re not bothered about style or image, or speed.

Comfort

You'll hear the pockmarks in the average carriageway like they were inside your own ear canal. Can also crash over bumps and is noisy when accelerating through the gears. Other than that, fine.

Performance

The 5.7-litre Hemi V8 may surprise some of you as fitted to the Picanto and it's front wheel drive chassis. Only joking! There's a choice of two power plants in the baby Kia; a 60bhp 1.0-litre or a 64bhp 1.1. Both are pretty slow - it takes the 1.1 15.2 seconds to reach 62mph, and neither will get much past 85mph. Good thing, too.

Cool

If the other option is walking, then the Picanto may be attractive. As soon as there's a sniff of a decent pushbike it'll be out the door though.

Quality

You pay peanuts, you get Picantos. Better quality plastics and a new interior were part of the last refresh, but you'd be hard pressed to tell.

Handling

There's grip in the world, but the Picanto has trouble divining exactly where it might be. Plenty of body lean and squeally-tyred understeer soon follow any sort of faint lob into a bend, shortly before you either stop being quite so enthusiastic, or crash.

Practicality

Lots of headroom, enough space for four and a credit card friendly price mean that the Picanto, in the world of economy superminis, is pretty good. The boot's pretty tiny at just 157litres, but at least the seats fold.

Running costs

Cheap is king here; insurance group 2 rises to 3 if you add the 0.1 and 4bhp, both get around 55mpg and the 1.0-litre sneaks in at just 117g/km of C02. New cost starts at just £5995. That's handy all round.