As soon as Hyundai poached Albert Biermann away from BMW M to head up its own N Division, we knew the South Koreans had their targets set squarely on the Germans. After helping to craft some fantastic sports cars for Hyundai’s N Division, Biermann was then promoted to head up R&D for the entire Hyundai group, which includes KIA as well. Such a promotion was smart on Hyundai’s part, as it’s already bearing fruit. The all-new KIA K5 GT was just independently tested against the BMW 330i and wiped the proverbial floor with the benchmark Bimmer.
The independent objective testing was done by AMCI Testing, a company that specializes in fair, data-driven testing. While objective data-based testing is only one part of determining whether or not one car is a better driver’s car than another, it is one way to quantify a car’s actual capabilities. In AMCI’s testing, they use only hard data to determine how well a car handles, through a variety of scientific tests. There are no subjective determinations from AMCI Testing, only numbers and numbers cannot lie.
The Drive did a deep dive into one of AMCI’s recent tests between the KIA K5 GT and the BMW 330i. It’s a long but fascinating read into not only the differences between both cars but how AMCI Testing conducts their business. Typically, a car company reaches out to AMCI and tells them that it wants one of its specific cars tested up against either another specific car or a group of specific cars. Reason being is that the car company usually has a good feeling, based on its engineers’ consensus, that its car can win.
So AMCI Testing puts the requested cars through the ringer and returns only data and numbers, with no subjective determinations.
In this instance, the KIA K5 GT, with its 2.0 liter turbocharged four-cylinder making 295 horsepower and front-wheel drive, was not only faster in a straight line than the BMW 330i and its 255 horsepower turbo-four, it handled better as well. The K5 was better in a slalom, pulled higher g-forces through cornering, accelerated faster at speed and ran a faster quarter mile. Essentially, in every objective test the two cars were put through, the KIA came out on top.
Of course, things like steering feel, brake pedal feel, chassis balance and overall fun weren’t taken into consideration. However, the date certainly points to the KIA as the better car. We’d love to test one out for ourselves to see if it can also take down the Bimmer in subjective testing.
[Source: The Drive]
