Kia Cerato 2.0 Test Drive Story

Kia Cerato 2.0 Test Drive Story

Me and my friend had just done our workout at Orient Fitness gym and we were so hungry. We decided to go to Queensbay mall for lunch. Coincidentally, there was a roadshow from Naza Kia and there was a test drive units Kia Cerato 2.0 and 1.6 models parking beside the Starbuck cafe. We decided to test the cars after we had our lunch.

Kia Cerato, the new model from Kia that replaces the older model of Kia Forte. This means that Naza Kia no longer produced Kia Forte model. The new  car come with a lot refinement compared to it previous model, and this is impressed Kia a lot of fans included me.

We signed up for the test drive and they assigned a sales adviser to guide us for the test drive.  We went to the car and the first thing that I am going experience from this all new Kia Cerato 2.0 is the keyless entry feature. The keyless entry system allowed us to unlock the car when we open the car door from the handle without pressing the remote control button.

The side mirrors automatically flip out to indicate when the car is unlocked. The Kia Cerato 2.0 side mirrors flip back in when we lock back the car. It is really convenient for users when they want to re-confirm whether the car is locked or unlocked, they can just look at the position of the side mirror.

Not the mention, the side mirrors come with beautiful puddle lamp too 🙂

Upon we get into the car, we were welcomed by the black, luxury leather seats. Then, I turned ON the engine through the push start button feature and the engine started up smoothly. It seemed that the sound insulator from this Naza Kia Cerato 2.0 is exceeded my expectation. The engine noise was almost totally insulated from the cabin, we barely hear the engine running when we are inside the car cabin.

The dashboard comes with expandable materials and it looks elegant with black color too. The dashboard panel is even coated with carbon fiber design which makes the interior more sportier.

Kia Cerato 2.0 comes with automatic dual air conditional with cluster ionizer and it’s powerful as well. The dual automatic air conditional were sufficient to cool down 3 of us in the car immediately after we went into the car. There is a rear air vent in this Kia Cerato too that helps to cool down rear passengers effortlessly. The function of the cluster ionizer is to help clean up the air inside the cabin, which is uses to be a luxury car feature. Now Kia had brought this feature to their Cerato model, the C-segment car.

The accelerator and break pedals come with chrome finished that make the car sportier.

The driver seat even comes with heating and cooling functions. Wow, I can feel my butt was getting cold when I turned ON the cooling function. The driver seat comes with 10-way power driver seats with memory.  Here is another luxury feature being brought to the car.

Everything inside the car seems great and looks high tech too but there are something that pull the car backward. The Kia Cerato 2.0 interior only comes with single tone color which is black and the seats design doesn’t looks appealing or sporty to match the with car’s features.

One of the biggest enhancements made to this Kia Cerato 2.0 model compared to Kia Forte is that they have added the sunroof feature, which makes the driving experience more fun and enjoyable.

The all new Kia Cerato 2.0 is not only filled with all those luxury and high end features, but also packed with great handling and performance.

The test drive story continue…
I started to drive the car from the Queensbay Mall and headed down to the road, the car moved effortlessly and I was able to control the acceleration of the car precisely. The accelerator pedal is in the right ratio for the driver.

Kia Cerato 2.0 comes with Motor Driven Power Steering (MDPS) with Flex Steer that offers 3 modes which are comfort mode, normal mode and sport mode. At the comfort mode, the steering is as light as Perodua Myvi’s steering. This feature allows the driver to choose the steering weight that they prefer. I’ve tried out all the 3 modes, and it is really useful when switching the steering weight to ‘comfort mode’ while parking the car, ‘normal mode’ is for normal driving in city and ‘sport mode’ during cruising on the highway at high speed.

The Kia Cerato 2.0 comes with sporty and beautiful illumination of panel meter as well. Equipped with Supervision with Cluster 4.2″ Full Color TFT-LCD, this feature allows the driver to easily read the car information through a glance while keep the eyes focusing on the road.

Kia Cerato 2.0  is packed with 2.0 NU Engine, capable of delivering 161 PS and 194 Nm at 4800rpm. The salesman told me that Kia has made some refinements on the engine by making the engine blocks lighter, thus providing better performance and fuel efficiency compared to older version of Kia Forte.

Kia Cerato 2.0 NU engine combined with 6-speed auto transmission give the us the smooth ride. The test drive was fun as I got to slam the accelerator to the floor to test out the maximum acceleration of the  Kia Cerato 2.0. The car is powerful and meet my performance expectation and the engine roaring sounds is smoother compared to the older version of Kia Forte.

In fact, I’ve tested Kia Cerato 1.6 too. I find that the performance of Cerato 2.0 in acceleration is slightly better than Cerato 1.6. However, the difference was not significant.

Kia Cerato 2.0 armed with 5-spokes 215/45/17 sport wheel profile with  MacPherson strut front and torsion-beam rear set-up, where the settings have been tweaked and polished to give the ride a good handling especially when cruising the car with high speed. The handling gives me a confident feeling as the car is still in a stable condition even though the car is already hitting 100km/h on the road (can’t really go faster than that because I was driving around the Bayan Lepas road only)

I also got the opportunity to make a few quick sharp turns with the car. Guess what, the Kia Cerato 2.0 did not loose itself from the gripping on the road and I had made a beautiful turning point. Of course, I did give warnings to my friend and the salesman before I did that.

Other than that, one shall not expect this Naza Kia Cerato 2.0 to give a very comfortable ride since it has a sporty suspension setting. I find the car very bumpy and gives solid feel when going through the bumps and potholes on the road.

If we compared this car with its rivals Honda Civic  or Toyota Altis where they belonged to the same C-segment car in handling, Kia Cerato 2.0 has the most stiffed suspensions setting.

The outlooks of Kia Cerato 2.0 is pretty cool too. The car is dressed up with beautiful Day Light Running LEDs, projector HID Xenon headlamps,  pockets light at handles and LED rear combination lamps.

Other great features include  4.3″ Touch Screen TFT-LCD with rear view camera, front and rear parking assist system, electric chromic mirror which will auto dim itself when someone turned ON the highlight from behind the car,  and the headlamp come with auto defog system.

Safety features include 6 air bags with system passenger air bags switch, electronic stability control (HSC+ABS+BAS+TCS).  This car is really packed with a lot of features if compared to my Toyota Vios GT Street.

Pricing at RM118,888, I believe it is a good deal and worth the money since Kia Cerato 2.0 is packed with so many great features as compared to its C-segment’s rivals. The test drive was fun and we received goodies such as recycle bags and key chains.

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