We took the weekday afternoon to check out the first two car showrooms. Both showrooms were situated just opposite each other – or rather in fact, the Ubi Road stretch sees a row of car dealerships side by side and all eyeballing each other LOL – and were the authorized distributors for the Nissan Sylphy and Kia Forte K3 models we’d shortlisted. Business at both showrooms was fairly quiet for the afternoon, so we didn’t need to wait to be served. Like our purchase of the Nissan Latio 8 years ago, Ling did the test-drive honors and noted the more subjective handling and general performance parts of our evaluation, while I busied myself making mental notes as a passenger and looking at the more technical specifications side of things.
We checked out the Sylphy first, and our brief comments from our two visits.
Nissan Sylphy 1.6L Premium
Nice, modern looks and exterior styling – though we aren’t too bothered if it wasn’t. We lived with a car that looks like a brick for 8 years. Anything is an upgrade!
A few options for interior, though oddly not in the exterior/interior combo we preferred.
Has most of the key features we want: e.g. keyless ignition/entry, GPS, rear air-con vents, reverse camera, large LCD dashboard serving as a media player display panel too.
Doesn’t have a lot of features we’ve taken for granted from the Latio: foot brake, auto-sensing headlights. I quipped to the salesperson aren’t we then downgrading LOL.
Slightly better fuel-economy than the Forte K3.
The speed pick-up seemed about the same as the Latio, despite its higher rated engine power.
We can transfer our existing Latio maintenance plan to the new one since it’s the same dealership. hooray!
As an aside too; the attending salesperson knew the car and purchasing procedures very well and could rattle off details easily and confidently, but also struck us as someone who seemed a little disinterested. Nothing quite like the very warm and knowledgeable Nissan salesperson who sold us the Latio back then. He was so eager to get our sale maybe we should have squeezed him for a few complimentary cartons of abalone.
Kia Forte K3 1.6L SX
Slightly more sporty and even more modern looking exterior than the Sylphy.
Interior only comes in one color. Boo!
Has features up the wazoo, some of which are unique: electrically-controlled, memory and cooled driver seat (Kia clearly is pampering the driver in this model), auto-sensing headlights, knockdown passenger seats (useful for furniture shopping), different steering options.
A dashboard display that looks like a Star Trek command console. Super futuristic!
Doesn’t have a few default features from the Sylphy: reverse camera, GPS maps.
Slightly less good fuel economy than the Sylphy, but also showed visibly better speed pick-up on the other hand.
The attending salesperson was very enthusiastic and helpful, but from the get-go was also obviously new to the job.
Most seriously though was that the recent COE prices have led to revisions to both cars’ listed prices, and going with the recent published pricelists, the Forte K3 no longer has a price advantage over the Sylphy. In fact, it’s slightly even more expensive now. Duh.
We also wanted to check out the Toyota Corolla Altis too, but their showroom – situated on the same road – was closed because of a company event. Too bad. They didn’t get our business. Or maybe we’ll give them a second chance and try a different day again.
More to come soon.:)
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