Have you ever noticed that the short action heroes seem to pack the meanest punch, take the hardest hits and are near impossible to catch, capture or kill?
Think about it.
Bruce Willis as John McClane, Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, Mel Gibson as Riggs, Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, and Daniel Craig as Bond.
Need the list continue?
None are taller than 1.85m, and with yours truly at the same height and routinely adjusting the seating position in every single press fleet vehicle upon collection, it seems there’s a theme with being short but unexpectedly tough as nails.
This sentiment extends to Kia’s properly bonkers Picanto GT, as expressed to the brand’s Australian communications team during the weeklong test.
Method:
• Take a regular Picanto.
• Open bonnet.
• Locate and remove nearest bee hive use wasp nest if bees unavailable.
• Insert bees/wasps into engine bay.
• Close bonnet.
• Depress clutch pedal, turn key to
start engine.
But this firecracker hot hatch is more than just a reverse engineered mirco-car from another top 10 manufacturer brand – it’s a sign of the times and yet it’s something of a flashback to the way cars, like action heroes, used to be.
Namely, real. Pay attention, anybody under 30.
You get a real manual gearbox housing five gear ratios you can select yourself in a two-stage process, by pushing the left (clutch) pedal, and moving the stick beside your left knee into the desired slot.
All joking aside, that movement is so effortless it’s almost cheating, and coming out the back is the sound of rice bubbles touching milk amplified a thousand times.
It’s a joyful process lost to a world of efficiency, timeliness and resourcefulness.
To hell with that.
Not so well thought-out are the cupholders fore of the gearshift which is begging for spilt Dr Pepper, and the centre console is barely considered storage, but provides an excellent armrest when conducting J-turns mid car chase.
However, you won’t be doing much resting when this malevolent little bugger gets stuck into it.
When you bury it, the snarl of angry bulldogs growling at a possum bellows from its enthusiastic dual pipework exiting the rear sportystyled bumper.
On several occasions I mistook the GT’s blow-off valve for a Kenworth’s air brake.
As you squirrel up and down streets and slingshot your way up country back roads, you’re taken by how pliable and tactile such a front-driver is before getting anywhere near the limit.
That’s helped by tyres, obviously, its low centre of gravity and a wellsorted chassis that doesn’t feel unduly stressed at the idea of being thrown down a hill or round corners.
The tiny 195/45 R16 alloys will skip over kerbs and bumps rather than slam into them like fatter ones.
Push the throttle right to the floor and you’ll squeeze the overboost button, which is kinda like Hans Gruber asking “Mr Cowboy” John McClane if he really thinks he has a chance.
Unfortunately, you must wait a couple of seconds for the turbo lag, which feels like forever, but the wait
is worth it.
Those bees/wasps you installed earlier respond to your right-toe prodding and go positively berserk, in
a Mohammed Ali kinda way – floating like a butterfly, and then pow!Since the Jack Russell emulating Picanto GT was launched in January this year, 195 units have been sold, which suggests the 1.0-litre three-cylinder engine’s 74kW (@6000rpm) and 172Nm (@4000rpm) is plenty of poke to stoke your fire, and of the segment-leading micro car’s 3098 sales this year, there are still petrolheads among them.
That torque figure is a 30% increase on the regular GT Line and its lesser siblings in the Picanto range, but it does it using less capacity, down from the 1.25-litre three-pot in the aforementioned.
Regular can also apply to the fuel you can tip into its teeny 35-litre tank.
Hopefully you enjoy changing gears yourself because the five-speed manual is all available to you, so save the complaints for someone who cares, and a 39kg kerb weight increase isn’t exactly going to butcher your lap times running to and from work, but it’s a good compromise for the added pepper on your steak.
The brakes can be pretty aggressive which is no surprise considering 256mm ventilated discs are only trying to stop a barely one-tonne metal box.
Also on the harsh side is the Macpherson strut and torsion beam rear suspension set-up, favouring the seeing-red rather than the potential pensioners our action heroes might become were they to sustain a back injury hitting potholes in the Picanto GT.
This fiesty featherweight is literally the only reason our vertically challenged action heroes might consider buying in the micro segment, and should they ever find themselves strapped for cash in retirement, will certainly be pleased there’s a more affordable, performance-orientated getaway car that doesn’t demand the big bucks.
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