Kia Stinger GT-Line 2.0 T-GDI 2017 first drive

The Kia Stinger may be many remarkable things: a brand-building, visually jaw-dropping rear-driven grand tourer the likes of which we’ve never seen from any Korean car maker. If you’ve read that before, it’s only because we’ve been told it before. A lot.

And yet, on one level, you always knew it was going to be a rule-breaker as well: a car priced in incendiary fashion to make a mockery of the value propositions of other rear-driven executive saloons, mostly made in Germany. Welcome to that level. This is the cheapest Stinger of the bunch: the turbocharged 2.0-litre entry-level model, which undercuts a like-for-like BMW 430i Gran Coupé by almost £8000 and even Volkswagen’s like-for-like Volkswagen Arteon by a similarly hefty wedge.

So far, Kia’s been careful to ensure our early experiences of its ambitious new design hero have been delivered by the 365bhp twin-turbo V6 model, and those preliminary tastes have been promising. But the greater affordability of this Stinger could potentially bring it to many more owners and allow it to exercise a much wider and more powerful influence on the recasting of Kia’s brand image. Assuming it’s of sufficiently high calibre, of course – and in entry-level, passively damped, four-cylinder form at that.

The 2.0-litre T-GDI Stinger will differ in its UK-market specification from the form in which US and European customers will get it as a result of an exhaust redesign necessary to package the car’s catalysts alongside a right-hand-drive steering column. An unavoidable increase in back pressure is the reason why, elsewhere in the world, this version of the car develops 252bhp but in right-hand-drive markets only makes 244bhp.

But that’s still significantly more power than £32,000 buys in any other rear-driven executive option. And it comes packaged with the Kia Stinger’s evident good looks, let’s not forget, as well as a standard specification offering that includes an eight-speed automatic gearbox, an 8.0in touchscreen infotainment system, head-up display, 18in alloy wheels, leather upholstery and a proper mechanical limited-slip differential for its driven rear axle.

At this price level, the Stinger’s cabin quality would certainly give you less cause for complaint than it would had you spent upwards of £40,000 on the car. It’s not that Kia’s cabin plastics look or feel particularly cheap; more that its attempts to make this driving environment seem desirable and expensive as often as not fall flat on their face.