Dear John: I’m looking for a luxury SUV on a budget

Story by John LeBlancBack in the old days — I’m talking around 1999 — if you were looking for a combination of a luxury sedan and the utility of an SUV, your choice was limited to high-end brands like Range Rover, BMW or Mercedes-Benz. With the past decade’s democratization of luxury, though, Canadians can now get many of […]

Road Test: 2016 Kia Sorento SX+ V6 AWD

Story and photo by John LeBlanc The all-new 2016 Kia Sorento should not have surprised me. Oh, I know. The Korean automaker’s tagline is “The Power to Surprise” and over the past few years, each new product introduction brought a surprisingly improved new model; wickedly competitive vehicles that bury the memories of the cheap-to-buy and equally cheap-feeling […]

Road Test: 2015 Kia Optima Hybrid

Story and photo by John LeBlanc Thank high fuel prices and stricter government-mandated fuel economy ratings for today’s variety of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles. Once limited to being quirky little cars when they arrived in the late 1990s (think first-gen Toyota Prius or Honda Insight), hybrids now come in all shapes and sizes, including family sedans like […]

Long-Term Test: 60 days with the 2015 Kia Sedona – Verdict

Story by John LeBlanc At the beginning of our long-term test of the new 2015 Kia Sedona, the overriding question we wanted to answer was if a minivan was relevant as a modern people-mover at a time when crossovers and SUVs dominate the showrooms. After two months and more than 3,500 kilometres behind the wheel of the Korean […]

Long-Term Test: 2015 Kia Sedona — Part 3

Story and photo by John LeBlanc Keen readers will notice that our 2015 Kia Sedona tester is wearing a healthy coat of slush, dirt, road salt and (for all we know) small bits of road kill. Well, after driving the new Kia minivan during what has been arguably one of the coldest, snowiest winters we’ve seen here […]

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