Why You Should Take Notice to Kia's Luxury Sleeper - The K900 Sedan

It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the concept of a luxurious Kia. But here I am in a Kia K900 Luxury, thinking that this unimaginatively named vehicle actually has the potential to take on the luxury car establishment. In stereotypical Korean-car fashion, this K900 blatantly borrows from the best: it has the automatic, soft-close doors of a Bentley; the door-mounted seat controls straight from Mercedes-Benz; a funky, geometrically complex gearshift lever lifted from BMW; and the well-thought-out sales model of the Volkswagen Phaeton.

Well… three out of four ain’t bad. The thing is, no one is looking to Kia for a luxury car experience, and despite a LeBron James endorsement, Kia just can’t move the K900.

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Its styling certainly isn’t helping things – the K900 looks just like a larger version of every other Kia. The trouble with that is, when people seek out a luxury item, they’re searching for something special, something unique. And they don’t want others to think that they had to walk past a wacky inflatable tube man to acquire it.

If you can shake your preconceptions about Kia, however, you’d find that the K900 does a lot of things right. So it looks like a larger version of every other Kia, having a bigger version isn’t a bad thing at all. And by “bigger” I mean “massive,” and when sprayed in the Snow White Pearl of my tester, this K9000 has an undeniably powerful presence.

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There’s a lot to like about the K900 Luxury. Soft, supple Nappa leather covers the seating surfaces, dash and major touch points, and the cabin is detailed with piano black accents and genuine wood trim. You get an oversized nav/infotainment screen, a customizable full TFT display in the gauge binnacle, and an easy-to-read heads-up display for the driver.

The tech and toys one expects from a luxury barge are present and accounted for—including heated and ventilated front seats, a heated steering wheel, a 17-speaker, 900-watt Lexicon sound system, and a suite of sensors to help prevent this house-sized Kia from getting into an accident. Passengers in the back get an even nicer space, with plenty of room to stretch out, heated and ventilated full-power seats with a recline feature, unique climate controls, and a non-stop opportunity to call the driver “Jeeves.”