2009 Kia Borrego Review
It takes Kia places you don’t expect, a big body on frame or luxury SUV for not a lot of
money. Let's see if they can feel that toll order and check the tech.
Borrego EX is coming in two main flavor ups, V6 and V8. Our car has the 3.8-liter 6 put
276 horsepower and 267 foot pounds of torque. This coupled to a 5-speed auto and that
whole combination gets around okay but never feels like it’s really into the job. The V8 is
a 4.6-liter unit that does 337 horsepower and 323 foot pounds and it has a 6-speed
automatic. Either way, these are body on framed vehicles which is a big part of why they
are kind of wondery and weird on the highway. Of course, the pay off is real truck
sturdiness when you're off-road or towing something.
Kia is not known as being a top line car maker. The idea here is you get the stuff you’ll
like without the fancy badge and the fancy price. Let's see how they pay off. We’ve got
the upgraded head unit here, Infiniti branded, 10 speakers all around the cabin and of
course, much better ability to really shape the music. But, notice there’s no surround
sound here, no Dolby pro logic, no synthetic stereo. It’s a relatively straightforward
system just better speaker’s higher quality amp.
In this case, we’ve got navigation on the screen and that means our normal six slots in the
CD deck is reduced to a single slot and there is no hard drive here to rip to. So you do
have a bit of a contraction of your available music with that single slot. But, it’s not too
bad and I’ll show you why. Let's start though with taking a look at the actual navigation
system. The resolution’s really good. This is a nice fine dot pitch and you could compare
it favorably to the best trimmed Lexus, Chrysler, some of the ones we like the most. And,
of course, getting around it is very simple with touchscreen icons. And, by the way, when
I enter the destination, you can see it gives me three choices on how to get there, different
road types if you will different route recommendations to choose from.
Our audio system is pretty good in terms of sources, AM, Fm, no HD radio on this guy.
No iPod adaptor in the truest sense. We do have satellite radio. It’s Sirius as you notice
from the logo on the Bissel, on the logo right there. And, at this point, notice this
interesting sort of display logic, the iconized iPod wheel. It doesn’t spin like an iPod does
but you have this sort of four corners of the Globe Logic. Under CD aux you have the in-
dash CD, USB I've got a thumb drive in there right now and you can see now. I can go
through very quickly and navigate that. No leg, I like this.
And, continuing on, we have an AUX jack right here, a standard analog AUX jack for
hooking up to what have you. Oh by the way, notice the word iPod right there by the
USB and AUX jack, you can connect an iPod for true onscreen access to its interface or
use USB or AUX independently for other devices. Also available on the screen would be
back up camera but its’ interestingly an ala carte option not just default part of a NAV
package.
By the way, rear seat entertainment is available as an option would be a single drop down
screen directly in the way of the mirror. You know not my favorite. But, it also has
auxiliary jacks and a 115-volt AC outlet so no need to bring an inverter when you get that
option.
Let’s price the Borrego EX, V6 about 28, the V8 about 31 but add two grands either one
for all wheel drive. Now, the option packages, premium package gives you the better
sound system, sun roof, rear HVAC and some other cabin niceties for this for $1,800.00.
NAV about $1,500.00, you’ll go ala carte 350 bucks for Bluetooth hands free. A couple
of options that are dealer based that would be the rear seat entertainment system and a
back up camera that shows the display in your rearview mirror.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services