Kia did some things with the Forte Koup quite well, while other things don’t quite measure up. For a start, it’s a good looking car, especially in the Corsa Blue paint that our tester came in. It does look a bit too much like a Honda Civic Coupe, but the added aggression in the front and rear fascia really works well.
For the price, of course, it takes some work to think of a better car. The Fit is more tossable and agile, but it lacks the Koup’s style. The Cube has style, but of a different sort, and isn’t as fast as the Koup, even if it is more entertaining. The Scion tC is a direct competitor, and I thought the tC was more engaging if slightly more ragged in its presentation. Of course you can spend more and get some really interesting cars (MazdaSpeed3, Civic Si, Mini), but we’re talking substantially more coin. So, all in all, the Koup seems like a pretty good value.
Not long after the launch of the Forte sedan, Kia now introduces the Forte Koup—a sleek entry into a class of vehicles dominated by the Honda Civic, Ford Focus, and Scion tC (which has lost a lot of its youthful Scion luster in recent years). Based on the same good-to-do groundwork as the Forte sedan, the Koup adds a bit more charm and slightly better dynamics to the Forte package; and without spoiling this review, it’s safe to say that Kia may have just built the best coupe available for under $20K.
While sitting around a candlelit table at Chandler’s Crabhouse in downtown Seattle, we talked with other journalists about our recent drive in Kia’s all-new Forte sedan—the replacement for the long-running Spectra. We discussed our generally lukewarm driving impressions, but still resolved that the Forte is a good competitor in the compact segment. One colleague said, “If I only write about the drive experience, it could come off as a bad review—but it isn’t actually a bad car at all.” So stay with us here, because while there may not be any juicy, exciting, sports-car-type bits about the Kia Forte, it’s still a perfectly adequate player in a segment that needs to appeal to the widest variety of shoppers. Think about the Nissan Sentra, Toyota Corolla, and Ford Focus sedans—these cars are tragically vanilla, but they still sell in droves. And so the Kia Forte comes to town, bringing with it a bigger pile of standard equipment, attractive design, and a very low price point. None of these cars are particularly exciting, and the Forte still manages to seal up the whole compact sedan package better than these aforementioned competitors.