2022 Kia Cerato GT Hatch review

The cover page of MY22 Cerato brochure features a Kia engineer in a spotless studio admiring the flagship GT’s freshly lifted face. Or its new Kia logo. Or, by the look of his gaze, perhaps both. He’s surely admiring another’s handiwork – a Schreyer, a Donckerwolke, a Habib – because, of course, designers of such calibre don’t hang about in lab coats carrying clipboards…

It’s a poetic image of sorts because apart from debuting Kia's new emblem on remodelled frontage, there’s not much else properly new about the MY22 Cerato GT. Apart, that is, from a modest price rise. Perhaps the other lab-coated being in the rear of the image is a Kia bean counter…

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Kia’s had a pretty good thing in K3, or what Australia still insists on calling Cerato, its small hatch and sedan range that has largely propped up the local business for some time. And this facelift is important as it needs to fire hot enough in the presence of stylistic forward pointers such as Seltos and Stonic and the major futuristic shake-up that’s the forthcoming all-new Sportage.

Fancy, fussy, heavy handed: make of the new rhinoplasty what you will but the new ‘swept headlight’ look aims for maximum effect and does wipe away some of the age from what was a pleasing if slightly mundane Cerato/K3 appearance that, in the local market, was merely three years young.

Still, the landscape beneath it moves quickly: the technically related Hyundai i30 was revised last year, Skoda Scala has arrived – plus the coming Octavia revamp if you think outside the box – as well as the eighth-gen Volkswagen Golf and a long-awaited all-new Honda Civic that’s incoming before year's end. All vying for territory Cerato wants more of and the Toyota Corolla owns.

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The GT ($35,290 list/$36,990 drive-away) has fair turf to cover as the warm sport hatch covering off the likes of Golf 110TSI R-Line and i30 N-Line Premium that want for similar coin and, in the absence of properly hot i30 N or Golf GTI competitor, its range’s flagship. Perhaps not coincidentally, the auto-only Kia undercuts a DCT-equipped i30 N-Line Premium but is pricier than Hyundai’s manual version for which the GT offers no alternative.

It’s also fair to expect fulsome luxo-sport duality from Kia’s flagship hatch given the connotations of its GT branding and that it sits atop two variants called Sport and Sport+. And its equipment list certain suggests as much. The GT gets the fanciest nose and tail job and is the sole recipient of full LED lighting with tricky integrated indictor jewellery, together with specific body styling and 18-inch wheels shod with Michelin Pilot Sport 4 rubber.

Make of the new rhinoplasty what you will but the new ‘swept headlight’ look aims for maximum effect and does wipe away some of its age

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Inside, the cabin departs from the rest of the range with so-called ‘tubular’ ventilated sports seats, paddle-shifters, a tilt-and-slide sunroof, inductive phone charging and JBL premium audio to compliment the high-grade 10.25 touchscreen infotainment system shared throughout the range bar the entry S version. Trim is said to be leather-appointed, the fine print unclear exactly how much of it is “polyurethane and other man-made materials”.

The GT bolsters its tricks bag with a wide-ranging safety suite that includes all-speed AEB with pedestrian and cyclist detection, the related adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring with collision avoidance, rear cross-traffic alert with collision avoidance, lane-keeping and following smarts, safe exit warning and leading vehicle departure alert. Some of these are either optional or absent elsewhere further down the range, leading to a situation where some variants, such as the GT, are five-star ANCAP rated while other less-endowed versions achieved four stars in the 2019 assessment.

Many of GT’s niceties are shared with the lower-grade Sport+. But the real lure – or perhaps the justification for its $5300 walk-up – is in powertrain and chassis. It’s not just turbocharging by way of its 1.6T-DGI four engine that’s exclusive to the top dog Cerato, but also its seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, dual exhaust format and 305mm/284mm upsized brake set. The GT is the only variant offering a rear multilink axle, its suspension and electric power steering systems both boasting specific ‘sport’ grade calibrations.

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As we covered off in our MY22 Cerato launch review, there’s no news under the facelifted skin bar a fiddle to the rear suspension damper compression and rebound to massage out the fierce ride characteristics of its forebear. Dynamically, though, it was surmised that nothing was broken nor required much at all in the way of fixing.

Still, you’d swear it’s louder. At idle, in Normal drive mode, there’s a hornets’ nest rasp I don’t recall being quite so conspicuous in pre-facelift form. And it simply gets more raucous, if not really any more sonorous, when opting for Sport amplification, which brings with it a rather synthetic reduction of the electric steering assistance that robs the tiller a little fluidity on the move.

But my, isn’t it a frisky powertrain. Even in Normal mode, throttle response is crisp and immediate and the dual-clutch gearbox, satisfyingly free of annoying low-speed palpitations, snicks tidily up and down its ratios cleanly and intuitively. There’s real polish in how this powertrain is in final finish.

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Sport, too, swings its sense of purpose with decent gusto, feeling feistier than its 150kW (at 6000rpm) might suggest on paper. It really lays on its broad peak torque band, between 1500-4500rpm, thicker than you might expect from just 1.6 litres and at times you’d swear it is plying more than the advertised 265Nm.

Its enthusiasm to march has undoubtedly much to do with a fairly trim 1395kg kerb weight – at least by measure of how long its equipment list is – but the sort of broad-stroke thrust this engine doles out gives it more the feel of a warmed-over turbo two-litre than hard-pushed, smaller-capacity unit.

It gets drive down well through the excellent Michelins, which will cry freedom with enough provocation, though the Cerato remains rock solid with barely a hint of torque steer. It has its driver connection well sorted, with genuine engagement and plenty of precision and feedback in its controls, a machine that responds keenly and progressively should you choose to dig in.

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If there’s a minor black mark in its intent to assert itself as a particularly spicy breed of warm hatch, it’s that the brakes are a little overly touchy and even then it’s only really during low-speed activity.

A lot of its frisky spunk feels more applied atop than something seeping through its DNA. It’s applied sportiness, rather than seeming convincingly innate. No foul, simply observation. Push on in the curves and GT does take on a more benign and less colourful character, one favouring surety rather than playfulness. It's a satisfying thing to throw along a nice and windy piece of bitumen but one that doesn’t necessarily seduce you into doing so.

Where it falls short – and hard – is in striking a proper sport-luxury balance. Despite suspension fiddling, ride quality remains harsh to the point of unsettling annoyance. The chassis seems specifically injected with a permanently rigid state, like some ever-present reminder of sporting intent, and it just throws what might’ve otherwise been a fine all-rounder off kilter with its heavy-handed damping.

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Ride quality and engine rasp apart, it’s a nicely resolved and polished commuter, the cooperative powertrain cooperation equalled by generally fine refinement and its resistance to ambient road and environmental noise.

The only real annoyances are the related lane-keeping and lane-following systems, separate in intent if functionally indistinguishable at times, strong-arming the steering, oftentimes at surprisingly low urban runabout speeds.

At a leisurely pace, the GT isn’t quite faithful to its 6.8L/100km combined consumption claim – more frugal by over half a litre than the naturally aspirated 2.0-litre Cerato – though it’s not far off it, returning low eights on what mostly an urban assessment cycle with a bit of highway driving thrown into the mix. It runs happily on regular or E10, too.

A lot of its frisky spunk feels more applied atop than something seeping through its DNA. It’s applied sportiness, rather than seeming convincingly innate

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The unchanged cabin remains a charmer, cast in Kia’s favoured ‘almost black’ grey with pleasing if predictable flourishes – red stitching, satin silver highlights, piano black surfaces – in the usually effective places. That the flat-bottom wheel is still vaguely Porsche-like and the circular air vents look Audi-esque, frankly, doesn’t hurt the upmarket façade.

Clarity and legibility have long been Kia cabin design strong suits and it looks and feels thoroughly conventional if to no real fault other than a sense of maturing age. Sound ergonomics and intuitive control placement blends nicely with the concerted sporty spin, right down to the pleasing driving position. It’s a shame the brand’s penchant for red control backlighting makes everything so hard to read in the dark.

It’s a roomy cabin for its class, with seating fore and aft that blend comfort and purpose in equal measure, the trim work decent enough although whatever leather is used is indistinguishable from the fake plastic stuff and of a tactility that won’t be mistaken for some big-dollar Euro.

This is also a solid and seemingly well-made interior bar some conspicuously wavy trim application along some of the seat contours. The rear seatbacks are 60:40 split-folding, converting a decent 428 litres off boot volume into quite a generous and impressively flat load space.

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The 10.25-inch touchscreen, resplendent in its oversized frame (with handy shortcut buttons) for maximum effect, is fast and fully featured if quickly becoming less of showpiece because it’s now been rolled out so extensively not just throughout Kia’s stable but across the Hyundai family, too. In fact, it’s also fitted to every Cerato bar the entry S, albeit without the GT’s impressively rich JBL audio. In short, it mirrors the rest of the package: dependable, easy to navigate and largely uncomplicated while not missing many tricks.

Kia still forges ahead with its fine seven-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty and, unsurprisingly, offers a correspondingly lengthy capped-priced servicing program, if with short 10,000km interval caps between visits (that are otherwise every 12 months). At around an average of $470 per visit, ownership is a little on the steep side, too.

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Let's call out MY22 Cerato GT hatch for what it is: a modest yet somewhat effective makeover to prevent what’s still a relatively young generation of small car growing old too quickly as a matter of perception. And because so little of it beyond its fresh face is new or different, there’s little to warrant updating from the old version unless you’re smitten by the revised styling.

Still, the package the facelift is built upon still stacks up impressively well, particularly in a segment that is moving rather quickly, drunk on premium aspirations and upwardly spiralling price tags (a world so strange a healthily optioned Golf GTI now breaches $60k on the road).

In some ways, by largely holding station the Cerato GT hatch looks a little more compelling now. Its powertrain is a gem and certainly outpunches some newcomers on paper, and it’s shoehorned into a package that, some suspension tuning apart, is hard to fault.

2022 Kia Cerato GT Hatch specifications

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Body: 5-door, 5-seat hatchback
Drive: front-wheel
Engine: 1591cc inline four, DOHC, 16v, turbocharged
Bore/stroke: 77.0 x 85.4mm
Compression: 10.0:1
Power: 150kW @ 6000rpm
Torque: 265Nm @ 1500-4500rpm
0-100km/h: N/A
Fuel consumption: 6.8L/100km (combined/claimed)
Weight: 1395kg (kerb)

Power/weight: 108kW/tonne
Transmission: seven-speed dual-clutch automatic
Suspension: struts, springs, dampers, anti-roll bar (f); multilinks, springs, dampers, anti-roll bar (r)
L/W/H: 4510/1800/1440mm
Wheelbase: 2700mm
Tracks: 1545/1559mm
Steering: electrically assisted rack-and-pinion
Brakes: 305mm ventilated discs, single-piston calipers (r); 284mm solid discs, single-piston calipers (r)
Wheels: 18 x 7.0-inch (f&r)
Tyres: 225/40 ZR18 (f&r) Michelin Pilot Sport 4
Price: $35,290