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What should I be paying?

The Picanto range looks fairly baffling when you see it all on paper, but it breaks down into bitesize chunks depending on what you’re after.

Do you just need a propelled chair or three with rain protection and low running costs? The entry-level 1-spec car starts the range at £12,250, opt for a lease deal and you can barely get in any new car for less than the base Kia’s £177 per month on a 37 month deal with just a £2,000 deposit. The most expensive of the basic trio of trims is the adequately-equipped 3 with automatic transmission at £15,950. If possible we’d urge you to stick with the manual and save £700 in the process, though.

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The chunkier X-Line models (X-Line and X-Line S, both with either manual or auto boxes) range from £14,900 to £17,000, and cost £10–£20 more per month to lease. Of course, all of these models come with Kia’s impressive seven-year/100,000-mile warranty that can be transferred between owners for as long as it’s still valid. 

The sportier looking GT-Line Picantos – and the only models to offer the fruitier turbocharged 99bhp T-GDi engine – run pretty much parallel to the X-Line cars, ranging from £14,900 to £15,600 with the 66bhp engine and £15,900 to £17,050 with the turbo unit. Over £17k does seem a lot to pay for a Picanto, but just under £16k for a GT-Line with the fruitier engine is where the value is at.

Running costs will be nice and low for the Picanto too – obviously fuel consumption depends on the model and wheel combo you go for, but official figures across the range are impressive. They’re around 59mpg for the 1, 2, 3 models, 52mpg for the X-Line and 53mpg for the GT-Line with the aforementioned more powerful 99bhp version of the 1.0-litre engine.

VED is much simpler – the 1 and 2 cars with manual transmission squeak into the £170 first-year bracket thanks to their 110g/km CO2 emissions, while the rest of the range sits in the 111-130g/km band that costs £190 in the first year. After that, all cars pay £155 for VED (unless they cost over £40,000, but frankly that’s all quite dull).

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When it comes to insurance groupings, all the Picantos sit within groups 1 to 5, apart from the top-spec GT-Line and GT-Line S Picantos with the 99bhp engine that fall into group 11. Phew.

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