Driven to extinction: Kia Stinger

If the Kia Stinger is not dead in Australia by the time you read this, it’s certainly on life support – with a finger hovering over the switch.

Kia imported 150 cars back in May, and that was the final batch to be delivered to these shores.

It has vanished from Kia’s local configurator, its flagship sporting car status usurped by the EV6. A car whose star burned so brightly for such a short period of time is about to blink out, and that is a bit of a shame.

In truth, the Stinger was never a great performance sedan. I ran the range-topping GT for a while and it was one of those cars with a respectable turn of pace, but which always seemed happier the gentler you were driving it.

It was nevertheless comfortable, well equipped, nicely finished, backed by a great warranty, always interesting to behold and seemed a generally good fit for Aussie road conditions.

That last bit is key, as the Stinger arrived just as the Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon were about to be axed.

Here was a big, fast, five-door sedan/liftback that while not exactly matching the Aussies’ DNA strand for strand, nevertheless offered buyers who wanted a grunty, generously-cut and affordable rear-driver something credible to consider.

We put the Stinger 330Si up against the Holden Commodore SS-V Redline and the Volkswagen Arteon 206TSI back in a 2017 test, fairly confident that the box-fresh Kia would do a number on the ageing Commo and the milquetoast Volksy. The results were surprising.

We quickly realised that only in Australia were we pigeonholing the Stinger as a Commodore rival. It wasn’t. It was more of a cut-price BMW 440i Gran Coupe or Audi S5 alternative instead, not really accustomed to rolling up its sleeves and wading into the mosh pit.

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Facelifted Stinger 200S interior shown

It would easy repeat 4.9sec pulls to 100km/h thanks to its largely unflappable launch control system

Driven hard it would chew through its tyres easily, and its approximate body control and dogged refusal to hold a gear would frustrate the enthusiast driver. But boy, was that V6 model quick.

It would easy repeat 4.9sec pulls to 100km/h thanks to its largely unflappable launch control system.

We all marvelled that here was a car that at the time cost a nadge over $50K, yet it came with a seven-year warranty, would fit your family with ease and could hold up in a drag race with a Porsche 996 GT3. Maybe not with the kids on board.

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Best of all, once you’d keyed into its specific personality, the Kia Stinger was enormously endearing.

It had a lazy likeability that never really rubbed off, happy to burble about most of the time before it reluctantly demonstrated its 272kW/510Nm party trick.

Oh yes, there was a weaksauce 2.0-litre turbo model for those who enjoyed wilful demonstrations of missing the point but we can happily gloss over that one.

Residual values for six-pot Stingers are reassuringly healthy, reflecting the fact that most have been well maintained with warranty still outstanding. It still makes a great used buy because, let’s face it, they won’t make one quite like this ever again.