Sorry Y'all.

In what seems to be an established pattern now, I've welcomed your advice on a purchase, carefully considered your opinions, and then failed to buy what you guys recommended. The only person who actually recommended Kia over Mazda to me was also the only person who had actually owned a Kia (thanks Kim). Consumer Reports scored them pretty much dead-even with each other, so either choice would have worked in my mind.

Yes, we went with the Kia Rondo instead of the Mazda 5. After going to both dealerships and test driving them, the decision was an easy one.


Don't get all twisted up. We had very good reasons. First of all, the Kia people were willing to knock almost $6,000 off the listing price of the Rondo. Mazda? Well, Mazda didn't even really want to knock $1,000 off. I'm just getting started here.

We went to the Kia dealership first because I was honestly expecting to buy a Mazda 5, and I thought "test drive a Kia, then go test drive a Mazda, buy a Mazda = minimal driving between places". We took my parents with me to be back seat drivers. The sales guy at Kia sent us on a test drive and we all piled in. It was a fun little drive and we all oohed at various little components and features we liked, and everyone was comfortable. The car felt well-made and visibility was great. There were handy places to store things everywhere, and everyone had a good time.

We negotiated, told the guy we were going to Mazda and might be back, and left. So we go to the Mazda dealership and all get into the Mazda 5. Immediately, my parents (who are not tall people) began shrieking about how the headrest to the back seat was digging into the MIDDLE of their backs. Apparently the back seats are made for a midgets or six-year-olds or both, and we don't hang out with either of those types of people so that doesn't work well for us. Also, even when the seats were pushed all the way back, there was NO leg room in the seats where they were sitting. Have I mentioned that they are not tall people? The last row of seats had even less leg-room. Also, those seats are not comfortable, and they are all buckets seats, which wouldn't work out so well for my large dog.

Aside from that, the car felt cheap. Much cheaper than the Kia. Where the Kia had a nicely laid out series of lidded storage compartments between the two front seats, for example, the Mazda had a plastic bucket with no top. (Apparently nobody in the Mazda engineering department owns dogs.) The whole thing felt cheaper than the Kia. Mazda as a company might make higher end cars generally, but between these two models, all four of us felt strongly that the Kia seemed like a better quality car. I'd be derelict in my duties if I didn't mention that the Kia has much better safety features, too.

The Kia also had better versatility. You can fold down the last row of seats in the Mazda 5, but not the middle ones. In the Kia, you can fold down the last row AND the middle row to make a very flat, very large cargo space. We actually opted not to get the last row of seats - we wanted storage bins in the floor instead - but we can still fold down the other seats if we're transporting something big. Not so with the Mazda 5.

So, we all went back to the Kia dealership and finalized our deal. The sales guy told us that Kias today are a much better quality car than when they first entered the market in Canada.

I don't have to believe him.

I don't have to worry that much if he's lying though, because we have a five year bumper-to-bumper warranty, and a free LIFETIME warranty on the power train (which is engine and transmission). Oh, and also, our first year of service is free.

So the way I see it, Kia is fighting an image problem. They started making better cars, but have not yet shaken the junky reputation. So Kia won with the better price, nicer accessories (storage, stereo, etc.), better versatility, better safety features, smoother ride, better visibility, much better warranty, and pretty much everything else. Keep in mind, I went into this with a slight preference for the Mazda 5. Unfortunately, I can't think of a single thing that was better on the Mazda 5 than the Kia Rondo.


We're happy that the decision was such an obvious one. We got a really good deal on our new car and we're picking it up on Thursday!