Car reviews

Introduction

The Carens is not likely to wow you with its looks or driving experience, but it is a cheap option in the MPV market. It comes with either five or six seats and is fairly spacious inside with plenty of head and legroom in the five-seater. The six-seater makes a more useful people carrier, but the five-seater comes with a more usable boot that can fit the whole family's luggage into. Both of the engines are unrefined and noisy, especially when pushed hard, but the diesel does come with enough power to haul the Carens around even when fully loaded.

Exterior & Interior

The Carens looks like most other MPV's on the market with the standard box shape body. The interior is spacious and comes as either a five or six seater with the layout being three rows of two in the six-seater. There is plenty of head and leg room for the front seat passengers, but the back seat passengers in the five-seater don't receive as much and doesn't quite compare to more modern MPV's such as the Touran and Scenic. The six-seater is even worse with the back row being hard to get into and comes with limited legroom, so is more suitable for children. The boot is a good size in the five-seater with enough room for all the families' luggage. As the six-seater uses some of the boot space for the last row of seats it is smaller and wont be able to carry everyone's luggage. The seats can only be folded down to increase load space and not removed completely unfortunately. The interior trim looks and feels cheap with plenty of plastic throughout and the central console has buttons that are oddly placed and isn't well laid out. The Carens comes with plenty of kit as standard, but the SE trim offers the best all round kit coming with electric windows all round, alloy wheels, air-con, ABS, electric wing mirrors, CD player, Climate control, lumbar support, parking sensors, traction control, airbags all round and roof rails.

Drive

The Carens ride is fairly comfortable with the suspension soaking up all but the worst of bumps easily. There is a lot of body roll in the corners though and the steering feels light and vague and doesn't handle motorways cruises very well where it tends to wallow. There is also a lot of wind and road noise coming into the cabin and when the engines are revved hard they both produce a penetrating noise which reverberates around the cabin making longer journeys a bit of an ordeal.

Faults & Repairs

There are very few problems to report with the Carens as it has proben to be tough and durable. The only things to look for when buying one is to check the rear suspension which can suffer from being fully loaded on a regular bases. There are likely to be squeaks and rattles inside from the trim, but this has always been a problem and it doesn't mean its going to fall apart. Kia is one of the cheapest dealers when it comes to hourly labour rates so services and repairs should prove to be fairly cheap as well.