On the way back to the city the next day, over the twisty two-lane, the Sedona was impressive in the curves, with power rack-and-pinion steering. Kia's marketing motto is "the power to surprise," and it fits here. We drove with a lot more spirit than your average minivan pilot, and found the turn-in to be precise, with no false moves. For safety, there's some built-in understeer, meaning you sometimes have to feed more steering into a corner as you speed around it, but if it were any more direct it might be darty.
The suspension kept pace with our cornering, allowing very little body lean. The only chink in its armor appeared when zooming over a rise in the road, beginning at maybe 45 miles per hour, as the front wheels wanted to hang. But when the Sedona settled, it stuck with no wallow. At the other end of the road, in the dips, it felt just fine.
We used the disc brakes pretty hard too, and they felt as good as the suspension.
The Sportmatic manual mode in the transmission was a pleasure. We have the feeling that drivers designed this new Sedona: Brits, in fact. We downshifted for corners and manually upshifted, and the transmission did exactly what we asked it do, and rarely any more. The lever fit nicely in the heel of our hand.
The engine sometimes sounded a bit harsh under hard acceleration at low rpm, but now we're nit-picking, which is a compliment of sorts, because that's what happens with high-quality vehicles. At idle, it's so quiet that we once tried to start it when it was already running. Next Page