Yes, the Rondo seems to fit into a category all its own. It's like a crossover between a station wagon and a minivan, I guess, but with an awful lot of car thrown in with it. How else could you describe a car-looking mode of transportation, with a hatch-back and room for 7 people? (I won't call it a 7 passenger vehicle, as one of my friends recently pointed out to me that in the dictionary, the driver is not considered to be a passenger, therefore it either has seating for 7, or is a 6 passenger vehicle).

The controls nicely fall to hand, and appear to be of good quality.

However, whatever way you look at it, I was totally amazed when I saw the 3rd row seating in such a relatively small vehicle, I even stood back and studied the outside for a while trying to figure out how they jammed all those seats in there!

It appears to me as if Kia has stumbled onto something that many have been missing, the fact that just because we occasionally require seating for 7, it doesn't necessarily follow that we need room for all their luggage as well.

Pretty much common sense when you think about it. Most owners only need that extra row of seats occasionally, and then mostly for short little trips with the kids and their friends. So if it's only a quick jaunt to the local ice cream parlor and not the ice rink, then do you need to carry much else other than the kids?

To explain that a little better, in my past life I ran a Land Rover service centre. A lot of my customers owned 7 seater Discovery models, and yet, very few of them ever had the rear jump seats down. In fact, on many of them, when I had to get to the rear light units to change a bulb, the jump seats were pretty much seized through lack of use.

Basically, a lot of buyers go for the extra seating just in case they need it, not because they truly do. Follow that thinking through and I believe that if you genuinely need room for 7, then purchase a minivan or a large SUV. If however, you simply want the security of knowing that you could carry more bodies should you need to, then I see the Kia Rondo as being right up your street!

I have to mention the wonderful 2.7L V6 power plant which my tester boasted.