After its runaway success with Seltos which made it a household name, Kia, the South Korean car giant, is trying to create a niche for its new multipurpose vehicle or MPV Carnival priced at Rs 63.90 lakh in the fiercely competitive Indian car market. This new facelift of the fourth generation Kia Carnival is trying to position itself between the popular Toyota Innova Hycross (Rs 31 lakh) and the Toyota Vellfire (Rs 1.
2 crore and Rs 1.3 crore), a proper luxury van and create a new segment in the car market as it has no real rival. When bookings for the Carnival began on September 16, Kia claimed to get over 1,800 bookings in less than 24 hours and till now it has crossed 3,000 bookings with merely less than 2 per cent cancellation.
This shows the market does respond overwhelmingly for innovative features packed in this utilitarian van. We took it for a spin to check out what it promises. The Exterior The new Carnival looks more like an SUVish van with an attractive design.
It is definitely massive in size and bigger in terms of length and width than full-size SUVs. It has got a very aggressive grille called Tiger Nose, an aggressive bumper, and LED DRLs, the quad headlamp units, of which the two above are low beams, and the two below are high beams. Carnival is almost 17 feet long with a straight and sharp design.
There is a strong shoulder line, aggressive wheel arches and prominent roof rails and the roof is so big that it needs two sunroofs. It sits on 18-inch alloy wheels .