Signed, Sealed & Delivered : Kia Sorento 2.2 CRDI Hi-Spec (PATR10T)

I was in London when I received news from the car dealer that my car was ready for collection, with all the accessories duly-installed and they further assisted me to tender for a PATR10T no. plate. Looks like this masculine brute of a handsome SUV was destined for greater things right from the very start then.

On the first weekend home, I brought PATR10T out for a drive to stretch its legs, and it performed admirably. There was a heavy rainstorm, and Waze took me through highways, oil palm plantations, paddy fields, before I came back to good weather by the beach. All the way from KL to Sekinchan and back, PATR10T was composed on the road and there was plenty of torque to move this heavy beast along. In fact, I had to be mindful of my right leg as the engine has yet to break in, so I had to keep it planted along in a linear basis until the first service was done at 1,000km.

The first service should come along soon enough, so look out for more adventures of PATR10T in the near future.

Moving-on From Toyota Harrier

Truth be told, the Toyota Harrier had been a good ride all these years. In 2017, it would have a make-over that would have it donning on a new coat of paint and new 18" shoes to be more updated to the current times.

However, the family has been growing and a 7-seater utility vehicle would be more befitting of the household now. 

With a RM200k budget in tow, I could either go the MUV route- in which a 2014 recond Toyota Vellfire 2.4 would fit the bill; or the SUV route- a 2014 recond Audi Q7 3.0 TDI could tick the 7-seater need. Recond vehicles typically have very low mileage on the clocks, but the car dealers that I spoke to readily admitted to tampering with the numbers so that it would be easier to sell the cars.

I thus decided that I would still be better off with a SUV, and a new one would inevitable make life easier. There were many new SUVs in the market, and the ones that I looked at included the following :

• Nissan X-Trail;
• Mitsubishi Outlander;
• Mitsubishi Pajero Sport;
• Toyota Fortuner;
• Ford Everest;
• Hyundai Sante Fe;
• Kia Sorento.

All the above were able to seat 7 pax, and came with All Wheel Drive functionality. Since the SUV would be essentially put to use on town tarmac, a unibody construction would be more practical given its biased towards comfort. After after testing the rides able, I found that the modern diesel engines would be the better package as the massive torque could move the SUV better yet sip very little fuel compared to the petrol counterparts. With these in place, there was only 1 real choice from the above i.e. Kia Sorento 2.2 CDRI Hi-Spec @ RM192k.

In fact, the CDRI Hi-Spec was just only released for bookings in May 2017, with the first batch to be delivered in July 2017. As such, there were still only very limited units of the CDRI Hi-spec on the Malaysian roads at the interim period, and mine was from this batch from Korea. And a new colour was introduced for this batch i.e. Imperial Bronze, so it was a no-brainer that I would go for this colour.

I would further book for additional accessories such as RayTech RX tint, CO2 Royal 7 coating, Kia ice cube fog-lamps, and Kia side steps amounting to RRP : RM11k; so these would come pre-installed on my car upon delivery. Now, just sit back and relax while the power of dreams take off henceforth.