Tested: 2021 Kia K5 GT Has Unfinished Business
Kia's handsome new front-drive K5 GT family sedan makes a healthy 290 horsepower. Now it just needs to be able to apply it to the road better.
Conventional wisdom says that 300 horsepower is about the practical limit for a front-wheel-drive car. It's all about basic physics: When a car accelerates, its weight shifts to the rear, and that's not ideal when the front tires are trying to drag the car around (and even less so if those tormented contact patches are also trying to cope with steering inputs). Certain front-drive cars manage to breach the 300-hp threshold and acceptably get away with it, and by "certain" we mean the Honda Civic Type R. The new 290-hp Kia K5 GT, on the other hand, is more like the 2006 Chevy Impala SS, which is another front-wheel-drive car that ran to 60 mph in less than six seconds and was less than poised doing so.