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2014 Kia Forte EX Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds.comEdmunds.com Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 10,315
edited September 2014 in Kia

image2014 Kia Forte EX Long-Term Road Test

The 2014 Kia Forte was the worst performer in the recent IIHS

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  • zimtheinvaderzimtheinvader Member Posts: 580
    I hope you like the way the wheels look because one is now inside the car with you.
  • duck87duck87 Member Posts: 649
    The Sentra was pretty bad too. One of the Chevys actually had the side airbag deploy late enough that it smacked the dummy's head after it hit the door. The Beetle might have done well if its side airbag actually inflated...
  • unionbusterunionbuster Member Posts: 42
    Still better than the utterly sh!tacular Dart.
  • agentorangeagentorange Member Posts: 893
    I bet it won't take an RPG too well either. If you work at it enough you can find a weakness in any structure. So the IIHS can dream up new ways to crunch cars, but are they realistic?
  • duck87duck87 Member Posts: 649
    @agentorange: IIRC, the institute said that about 1/4 of all crashes are of the small offset variety, constituting crashes that hits about 25% of the front structure of the vehicle. I mean this kind of crash is easy to visualize, right? Hitting an incomin
  • cotakcotak Member Posts: 89
    The new government side impact test also made a lot of cars looked bad as well. And most of them have not been redesigned.

    Still this is poor performance to a point that I would recommend people not buy this car.
  • unionbusterunionbuster Member Posts: 42
    I'll stick with a vehicle that needs to be involved in an accident before it starts hemorrhaging parts, duckie. The Dart is a miserable failure.
  • dg0472dg0472 Member Posts: 89
    duck87,

    Your memory fails you. The IIHS said that of all crashes resulting in serious or fatal injury to front seat passengers, nearly 25% were of the small-offset variety, a very different risk than 25% of all crashes.

    That said, this knocks the Forte off my shopping list unless Kia makes some changes very soon.

    Speaking of wheels, CR yesterday posted an entry about the IIHS's test of a recent Odyssey. They said it had wheels designed to shatter to avoid intrusion into the foot well. Sounds like an easy fix for Kia, but wonder how well they'll hold up?

    Maybe an airbag in the dash right near the A-pillar would be a good idea, too?
  • quadricyclequadricycle Member Posts: 827
    @dg0472: I think that the best system is from Volvo, which was one of the very few manufacturers working on the small offset before it became mandatory. I think that they have the wheel shear right off so that it can't enter the passenger compartment. Tha
  • stovt001_stovt001_ Member Posts: 799
    Well something had to be done to freshen up the tests. Cars, blessedly, have seen monumental leaps in safety, and now most cars pass with flying colors and there's only some small distinctions where some get perfect scores and some fall ever so slightly short of perfect. So, time to shake the tests up and tease out which cars really excel.
  • duck87duck87 Member Posts: 649
    @dg0472: Thanks, that's the right statistic (and actually that makes it seem more important). A lot of manufacturers are going to side airbags that cover the entire side of the car, including the A-pillar. It makes me wonder if the increase in A-pillar si
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