Last week, South Korean carmaker Kia launched the brand’s third product in the Indian market, the Kia Sonet compact SUV with a starting price of INR 6.71 lakh ex-showroom. The brand offers the Sonet in 15 different trim options but they are mainly divided into the ‘Tech Line and ‘GT Line’.
The fully loaded GT Line variant comes with a fully-loaded GTX+ trim in Turbo-Petrol and Diesel WGT (Wastegate Turbocharger). But the brand only revealed the prices on the iMT Clutch-Pedal-less intelligent manual transmission on the turbo-petrol and the 6-speed manual transmission on the diesel engine. Now the brand has launched the GTX+ Turbo-Petrol with a 7-speed DCT and GTX+ Diesel with a 6-speed torque converter automatic in the GT Line. Both the petrol and diesel top-spec trims are priced at INR 12.89 lakh ex-showroom, India. With the new additions, the Kia Sonet’s already vast portfolio has been expanded by two more options. Compared to their manual GTX+ counterparts, if iMT is considered to be manual, the new automatic transmission versions are INR 90,000 more expensive in both the petrol and diesel versions. As compared to the HTK+ 7DCT Turbo-Petrol the new GTX+ 7DCT is INR 2.40 lakh more expensive and the top-end HTK+ iMT it is priced INR 1.24 lakh higher.
Powering the Kia Sonet is a Smartstream 1.2-litre four-cylinder naturally-aspirated petrol engine paired to a 5-speed manual transmission. A 1.0 T-GDi three-cylinder turbo-petrol engine matched to a clutch-pedal less 6-speed iMT (intelligent manual transmission) or an automatic 7-speed DCT (Dual Clutch Transmission). The Sonet is also offered in two 1.5-litre CRDi diesel (WGT & VGT) matched to a 6-speed manual transmission or a 6-speed torque converter type automatic gearbox.
The Kia Sonet claims the best in the segment fuel efficiency on the Smartstream G1.2 5MT – 18.4 kmpl, G1.0T-GDi 6iMT – 18.2 kmpl, G1.0T-GDi 7DCT – 18.3, D1.5 VGT 6AT – 19.0 kmpl and D1.5 WGT 6MT – 24.1 kmpl.