Video: 2019 Kia Optima: Review

Seven years ago, Probably about the time you bought your last car, the group accounted for about one out of every six new car sales, but fast forward to now, and the family car is really more of an SUV, which leaves that sedan group, Enjoying only about half the popularity it once had. <v Narrator>Still, Kia doesn't seem to care. It last redesigned the Optima for the 2016 model year and now comes time for some mid cycle changes to attract what remains of the mid-sized sedan buying crowd. Among those changes are updated styling and a host of important safety features that used to be optional but are now standard. Those include automatic emergency braking and lane departure warning with steering assist. Now Kia won't call the steering assist lane centering steering button, It does a pretty good job of doing just that above, oh, 40 miles per hour or so in our test car. Which brings us to that car and Optima SX with the top available engine, a two liter, turbocharged, four cylinder. As Sportified mid-sized sedans go, the driving experience has some hits and misses. Get hard on the gas and you'll notice some turbo lag as the power takes a few moments to really kind of burst onto the scene, which sometimes gives you a little more than you wanted in the first place. It can require some modulation and the overall grunt is fine, but not up with your rival Honda accord, 2.0 T or Toyota Camry, V6. <v Narrator>SX trims pair the Optimas largest available wheel and 18 inch alloy with a sport tuned suspension. The results are notably firm and probably more than a lot of shoppers in the class may want. It reminds me a bit of the redesigned Nissan Ultima. Another firm riding car in this group. High-speed isolation is okay, but the Altima's suspension incures a lot of jostling over rapid elevation changes and some choppiness between sections of highway. Smaller wheels are a non-sport suspension tuning, which three other Optima trim level offers might soften things up. So be sure to compare those on your test drives. Now in exchange for all that, the SX delivers reasonably quick, directional changes and limited body roll and the Kumo solace tires in our test car have barely good grip during sweeping corners before the nose eventually pushes wide. It's not super fun, but it's fun enough. It should come as a shock to nobody that the Optima, like so many other Kia products, gets it done on the value front. Even at its bargain starting price, the Optima comes well-equipped with important safety tech alloy wheels had adjustable seats on both sides, not just for the driver and an eight inch touchscreen with apple CarPlay and Android auto. All of that is standard. So is Kia's excellent warranty. And so it goes for the rest of the car, which has decent seating space and respectable materials, quality, albeit bland cabin design that still can't match the sizzle inside the 2011 to 2015 Optima, chances are, most Optima shoppers care only a little about that and a lot more about value. Which Kia delivers in spades. You throw an excellent crash test ratings and an improving track record for reliability and the current generation and the Optima makes a lot of sense for midsize sedan shoppers. perhaps not the wow factor choice that made it previous generation cars.com best of 2011 vehicle, but something of a more logical decision today. So does that keep the Optima in the running for you? Well chances are, if you watched all the way to the end of this video, maybe.