Kia Rio - 2002 Review

I bought this car new in 2002.  It has minimal options, but I made sure to get AC and a CD player.  Electronic windows aren't available on this model for this year, but I don't miss electronic windows after 5 years of driving w/o them.

So after 5 years, I've had zero problems, the AC still runs icy cold, and I still run around a small city for a week on a tank of gas.  When the gas light comes on, I could run around with it on for two days when I lived in a smaller town.  The farthest I've gone on a full tank (10 gallons) is 330 miles (all highway).  The owner's manual says it's an 11.3 gallon tank, but I've never been able to put more than 10 in, even after the one time I ran out of gas.

The interior is still in tact (no missing knobs or broken air vents, etc).  Since the car was so inexpensive, it's already paid off.  The engine is still clean and like new, and I didn't have to use any of my warranty, which is good (10 years/100,000 miles).

The only thing I worry about is safety.  It's a very small car, and in a sea of SUV's a lot of people don't see you.  They CAN see you if they tried, but they don't.  So I would recommend this car to a good driver who pays attention to the people who aren't.  I've avoided being hit an uncountable number of times, mostly in larger cities like Kansas City and Colorado Springs, not so much the smaller places.  I think this is one reason why just about every Rio you see on the road has some sort of damage on it.  But it's a fantastic car for running around a town of about 100,000 people or smaller.

 But because it's so small with the best turning radius in it's class, if you're going somewhere parking is tight or hard to find, no problem.  This car has a huge advantage.  You can park it just about anywhere.

It's drives well for it's size.  During the December, 2006 blizzard that hit Colorado Springs and Denver, I was out in the worst of it trying to get home, and I wasn't one of the 2,000 people that got stranded in Colorado Springs.  It did amazingly well, far exceeding my expectations when we hit large inclines.  I never got stuck at all.  This could be due to me having driven the car for 5 years and knowing what it can do and what it can't, but it still did very well.

 It's still peppy on speed as well.  It's not a sports car or a powerful car, but it doesn't have issues accelerating when you need to pass someone or when you're coming off a red stoplight.  The AC does pull some power from it, though, so if I really need speed, I turn the AC button off to shut off the AC compressor until I don't need the extra oomph anymore.