What's cooking?

Now I'll be honest, I'm not much of a cook. In fact, some would tell you that I can manage to burn water, so you'd think that I would be the last person to sit down and watch a television show about cookery, but I do occasionally.

I like the one on BBC Canada. You know, the one where that Ramsay fellow, the guy with the funny accent, who swears every other word, and yet still manages to turn a failing restaurant into an emporium of culinary delight. All, without out the owner of the place punching his smarmy face in. I keep watching because I know that somebody's going to do it eventually!

However, what's that got to do with my story?

Well, although he could perhaps string sentences together in slightly more wholesome words, some of what he says rings true. Take his idea of what is required to produce a fine table offering.

First you need the right ingredients, yes? These then need to be put together by someone who understands what the #*#^ they are doing (sorry, but that's how he puts it!). It requires stirring at the right time, and then adding just the right amount of seasoning before it is brought to the table at its absolute peak of perfection, yes?


Sporty Hatchback?

Well, this got me thinking about the vehicle which I am driving this week, the Kia Spectra 5 door SX AT, which was originally described to me as a "sporty hatchback". Now I've driven my fair share of those things in my time, and so I'd like to think that I could recognize one without it having to come up to me saying, "Hello mate, pleased to meet you, I'm a sporty hatchback".

Obviously, the key ingredient required for one of these dishes is a healthy lump of meat under the hood. Nice and lean with not too much fat.

Now that's where things start to go immediately awry for me with this recipe, because under the hood of the Spectra 5 lurks basically a mediocre sirloin, not exactly prime beef if you know what I mean. Its 2.0L DOHC 4 cylinder produces 138hp @ 6000rpm, and although the vehicle could be termed a lightweight, it would need to be made from a much leaner cut to win many Michelin stars for performance.

We then come to the handling. In fact, the company representative actually encouraged me to, in his words, "throw it into a corner and see how well it handles". Now I'm not going to say that it behaves like mushy peas, far from it, but if we're talking vegetables, it appears that they were perhaps left in the pan a little too long.

Don't get me wrong, I've driven cars with much worse handling characteristics, but not many which promote themselves as being sporty. The steering is quite crisp, the brakes handle the job with ease, but it appears to me that they let the pastry chef choose the shock absorbers, because they're light, and yet, kind of doughy in feel. Mind you, that's nothing a good set of premium shocks couldn't put right.


We now come to the interior, which in my recipe book, needs a certain ambience to project the true feel of a sporty hatchback, and I have to say that the guys at Kia haven't done a bad job there. The layout is rather nice, the seats are comfortable and reasonably supportive, and the quality of the materials used could put other similar vehicles to shame. However, as nice as it is, it would be a stretch of the imagination to call it the CrÚme BrulÚe of hot hatch interiors. It simply looks mildly better than some of its competitors, and even then, there are certain items like the old-fashioned looking stereo unit, which let it down.