Kia Picanto review

From £9,5007

Facelifted city car offers stripped-back, simple driving at affordable prices

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Good news! There’s a new car with a naturally aspirated engine and a manual gearbox that weighs under a tonne. It isn’t the latest carbonfibre Porsche special edition but one of the cheapest new cars you can buy: the Kia Picanto.

Okay, ‘new’ is a stretch because this is the facelifted version of the third-generation Picanto, which was launched in 2018, and it’s a mostly cosmetic refresh at that. It gains Kia EV9-inspired headlights and there’s a new light bar at the rear, because of course there is.

The GT Line’s sports styling may be a bit over the top for more mature buyers but is more likely to be approved of by the twenty-something clientele that Kia is directly courting here
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

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DESIGN & STYLING

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02 Kia Picanto 2024 review front head on

Mechanically, the only change is a shuffling of the powertrain line-up. The naturally aspirated 1.0-litre three-cylinder remains, except with 62bhp instead of a fire-breathing 66bhp.

Meanwhile, the 99bhp turbo version has been killed off. Blame fleet CO2 averages, because apparently it sold quite well pre-facelift. For those who want more power, the 1.25-litre four-cylinder that was discontinued in 2020 has been reintroduced. However, it has also lost a few horses, going down from 83bhp to 77bhp.

As car design gets more aggressive-looking in general, small cars seemed like the last vestige of cuteness and friendliness, but it seems even that has gone with the facelifted Picanto. Pity.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

The car you see in the photos is the 2 trim, which gets good old halogen lights and diddy 14in alloy wheels, and has become the entry-level since the stripped-out 1 was dropped with the facelift. The range progresses through GT-Line, 3, Shadow and GT-Line S.

The 2, 3 and GT-Line models only come with the 1.0-litre, while Shadow and GT-Line S are only available with the 1.25.

The GT-Line trims add some extra equipment, as well as 16in wheels and a over-the-top bodykit that includes a diffuser.

INTERIOR

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09 Kia Picanto 2024 review dashboard

The 2024 facelift has given Kia the opportunity to update the interior materials and technology, but it hasn’t made any drastic changes. It’s still an attractively designed cabin – not as playful perhaps as the Toyota Aygo X’s or the late VW Up’s, but with enough of a styling flourish in the shape of the rounded air vents.

Almost everything is made from fairly cheap-looking hard plastic, but that’s par for the course in an A-segment hatchback, and everything feels sturdy enough. Even in the entry-level 2, Kia has quite cleverly upholstered the gear knob and steering wheel in artificial leather, so the main touchpoints are nice enough. Being an older design, there are also fully physical buttons and dials for the heating and ventilation.

All Picantos now get a digital gauge cluster, but quite a basic one. I miss the analogue dials.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

Analogue gauges have been ditched for 2024, though. Instead, there’s a fairly basic digital gauge cluster with big numbers for the speed and revs.

The driving position is decidedly ‘city car’, however. With a fairly flat seat and no reach adjustment for the steering column, drivers will ideally be short of leg and long of arm. Although the GT-Line has sportier-looking leatherette upholstery, the seats themselves are the same and no more comfortable. That said, credit to Kia for fitting proper seats with separate, adjustable headrests up front, rather than chairs with integrated head restraints, which are seldom as comfortable

The 255-litre boot is impressively deep, and so long as the people in the front don’t mind some knee-powered lumbar support, you can just about cram four people into this small car.

Infotainment and multimedia

A touchscreen used to be fitted on only higher trims, with cheaper versions getting a fairly simple radio head unit with a few buttons and a segmented display. From 2024, all Picantos feature an 8.0in touchscreen. It runs an older version of Kia’s software yet works logically enough and even includes built-in navigation. The standard audio system is nothing special but better than you might expect in an entry-level car. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto both require a USB-A connection.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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18 Kia Picanto 2024 review 1 0 litre engine

With the engine running, you can appreciate the refinement boost the Picanto has had with the 1.2-litre motor just as easily as you can with the 1.0-litre. The engine starts quietly and around town, the motor remains well mannered and smooth, only getting slightly tremulous and coarse above 4000rpm.

The better news is that the four-cylinder engine’s greater medium-range torque means you needn’t work it nearly as hard as the 1.0-litre engine in order to keep up with the traffic. Despite the longer gear ratios, the 1.2-litre Picanto will pull cleanly and usefully from just about 2000rpm in third and fourth gears, whether you’re in town, on winding and undulating country roads or on the motorway.

Like an E60-gen BMW M5 or Noble M600, the Picanto has a button that makes the engine more powerful. It’s labelled ‘A/C’ and has the side effect of making the interior warmer in summer
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

As a result, the 1.2-litre Picanto drives much more like a full-sized supermini than its range-mate and maintains its prevailing speed in high gears much more effortlessly.

That said, there’s fun to be found in winding the 1.0-litre out. To keep up any pace at all, you need to be to the boards and well above 3500rpm pretty much all the time. It has that charming half-a-911 growl and sounds happy to take the punishment. The five-speed manual is sweet and snicky, and the pedals are set up to make rev-matching practically automatic.

We’ve not tried the automated manual gearbox in a while, but when we reviewed it a few years ago, we found it to be slow, clunky and dim-witted. According to the spec sheet, it still adds about three seconds to the 0-62mph time of both engines. Given how light and easy the clutch on the manual is, the automatic option seems one to avoid unless you have absolutely no other choice

RIDE & HANDLING

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19 Kia Picanto 2024 review front cornering

The Picanto is a long way from fast or particularly exciting to drive but it can be good fun on just about any road, given that you can drive it practically flat out everywhere and not trouble the speed limit.

The steering is rather light and a touch remote but does weight up a little when you load up the chassis. Rather, the fun comes simply from how small and light this car is. It means you have lots of road to play with, and the sense of diving into corners with very little inertia is always entertaining.

With a light and simple car, one with relatively rudimentary suspension technology, it pays to limit the amount of unsprung weight. As a result, the 2, on its diddy 14 alloy wheels, rides with a surprising amount of isolation and composure. However, the Picanto’s low-speed ride does suffer a bit in dealing with the extra unsprung mass and shortness of sidewall on those 16in wheels and fitted tyres, sometimes crashing over sharper ridges.

You don’t expect low levels of road noise on the motorway in this type of car and indeed the Picanto doesn’t have them but they are more than reasonable. If you can live with the driving position, long journeys in a Picanto needn’t be problematic.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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01 Kia Picanto 2024 review front driving lead

Prices for the Picanto in 2024 start at £15,595 for a 1.0-litre manual in 2 trim. The automated manual is only £700 more. With its small wheels and fabric interior, but useful equipment like air conditioning and cruise control as standard, this is probably the one to go for. If you want niceties like heated seats and automatic climate control, you’ll have to upgrade to the 3 for £17,545, but that also adds the 16in wheels.

The 1.2 is available from ‘Shadow’ grade, which also adds leatherette upholstery. GT-Line (for the 1.0-litre) and GT-Line S (for the 1.2) bring sporty styling.

That’s all slightly more expensive than a comparable Toyota Aygo X (which comes with a 71bhp engine, so roughly in the middle of the 1.0-litre and 1.2-litre Picanto). The same is true on PCP finance.

The efficiency benefits of the Picanto’s light weight and small engines is only slightly tempered by having to thrash the engine all the time. Still, in normal motoring, you’ll struggle to do less than 50mpg in the 1.0-litre.

VERDICT

21 Kia Picanto 2024 review front static

With less power, fussier styling and a higher price than before, we can’t say the updated Kia Picanto is better than the version it replaces. But then perhaps that’s not the point. Margins for cheap cars like this are razor-thin, and most manufacturers have simply given up on the segment. The Volkswagen Up, Peugeot 108, Citroën C1 and Renault Twingo are all gone.

Even so, there are still alternatives out there, such as the Dacia Sandero, Hyundai i10, Toyota Aygo X and the upcoming Citroën C3, while fully fledged superminis like the Renault Clio aren’t an enormous step up.

In its own right, the Picanto is a very charming little car. Its driving position is compromised but it’s well equipped, good to drive and quite practical for its size.

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Illya Verpraet

Illya Verpraet Road Tester Autocar
Title: Road Tester

As part of Autocar’s road test team, Illya drives everything from superminis to supercars, and writes reviews, comparison tests, as well as the odd feature and news story. 

Much of his time is spent wrangling the data logger and wielding the tape measure to gather the data for Autocar’s eight-page road tests, which are the most rigorous in the business thanks to independent performance, fuel consumption and noise figures.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.

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