2018 Kia Stinger – An In-Depth Look

The all-new 2018 Kia Stinger, a true game-changer for the Korean car maker, is finally out and we get to see if their attempt at making a sporty gran turismo has been successful. The car was always great on paper, and we are glad to say the first impressions of it in the real world have also been pretty good. Looks like the Stinger is a hit. 

It hasn’t been an easy success for Kia, though. To arrive at this point where they can point to a 2018 Kia Stinger and be proud of it,the company has spent a huge amount of money and worked some of the best talents in the auto industry overtime. It took a lot of studying and meetings to decided the Stinger should be a four-door sports sedan and not a coupe. The choice of engines was also a matter of great debate. And then there was all the testing. Kia’s engineers put every development Stinger through a minimum of 480 laps (equivalent to 6,214 miles) of high-stress driving around the Nordschleife for quality, reliability and durability testing. They also drove the car for over 100,000 on public roads.

You can have the sleek 2018 Kia Stinger with either a 2.0-liter twin-scroll turbocharged four-cylinder Theta II engine or a 3.3-liter twin-turbo V6 Lambda II engine. The former offers 255 horsepower with 260 lb.-ft. of torque, while the latter brings to the table 365 horsepower and 376 lb.-ft. Obviously, you want the V6, especially as it does 0 to 60 mph in 4.7 seconds. But do not disregard the efficiency (relative to power) of the four-pot. It could prove even more popular. The Stinger features a second-generation eight-speed rear-drive automatic transmission and you can choose between rear or all-wheel-drive. The former, needless to say, is a lot more fun around the corners.

Being a Kia means the 2018 Stinger comes with a boatload of standard and available features. The car is particularly impressive in terms of safety and connectivity, where the list of options include such items as height-adjustable color Head-Up Display (HUD), Forward Collision Avoidance, Lane Keeping Assist (LKA), Smart Cruise Control with Stop & Go., Harman/Kardon audio system and… The upshot of all this is that Kia Stinger is not just a fun car on twisty roads. It is also a good long-distance cruiser.

“Unlike any Kia that has come before it, the Stinger really is a dream car for us and after years of commitment and hard work from a passionate group of designers, engineers and executives around the world, that dream is now a reality,” said Orth Hedrick, vice president, product planning, Kia Motors America. “From its GT concept-car origins to the years of tuning and refining on the legendary Nürburgring circuit, no detail was too small to be obsessed over, and the result is simply stunning.”