Summarize

2017 Kia Picanto

Picanto proves best two year old entry buy

Now that Gumtree has presented its Pre-Owned Car Award winners for 2020 as exclusively previewed on Auto Bakkie Race over the past few weeks, we move on to covering each of the winners in its own right. We start with the best two-year old Budget City Car this side of R140K — the Kia Picanto.

Gumtree's Pre-Owned Awards saw the five two year old cars that best retained their new value across twelve categories presented to the Pre Owned Jury, which voted to determine the winner of each category through an exhaustive process that considered a broad variety of parameters including those regular Car of the Year parameters, but this time with particular attention paid to the used car attraction in each case.

In alphabetical order, the Kia Picanto, Renault Kwid, Toyota Aygo, Toyota Etios and Volkswagen Take Up! were the five bargain basement cars that best maintained their value in the South African market and the Jury decided that the Kia Picanto was the one that represented the best buy of the lot.

There’s a hell of a lot of car in Picanto, it rides and drives well too and offers a pretty sound bargain off a broad enough range too, but it was one of the three out of the twelve winning cars that Auto Bakkie Race did not predict as the winner in its class. We had it second to the Toyota Aygo as our bargain bet.

This Budget quintet was admittedly a closely matched field and the Kia nonetheless surprised us by its best value retention, a crucial consideration in this most value driven entry niche that clearly tickled the general Jury’s fancy best. So it was no surprise to us that it won.  

Perhaps most pertinently however, the Picanto was developed in the 21st century for the 21st century, so it is a far safer bet versus certain bang for buck rivals that tend to deliver the least car for the most money and which the Federation International d’Automobile warns against driving. The FIA warns that you put your life at risk every time you travel in those cars, but the Kia achieves a reasonable safety rating. Crucial when buying your kid that first car, no?

So there you go — the Kia Picanto 1.0 Street is Gumtree’s best two-year old pre-owned hatchback this side of R140K — and for damn good reason, too — Michele Lupini.