carandbike Awards 2021: Kia Sonet Wins Car Of The Year

The Kia Sonet has been awarded the prestigious 2021 CNB Car of the Year. The popular offering from the South Korean carmaker also took home the 2021 CNB Subcompact SUV of the Year award this year. Furthermore, this year the Kia Sonet faced strong competition from the Hyundai i20, Mahindra Thar, Honda City, Volkswagen T-ROC, Volkswagen Tiguan AllSpace, BMW 220 d, and the Kia Carnival. However, the Sonet managed to impress our jury members enough to bag the coveted title.

The Kia Sonet is offered in three powertrain choices - a 1.2-litre naturally-aspirated petrol unit, a 1.0-litre T-GDI turbocharged petrol engine, and a 1.5-litre diesel motor offered with WGT on the manual and VGT on the automatic. The 1.2-litre petrol unit is said to make 82 bhp at 6,300 rpm and a peak torque of 115 Nm at 4200 rpm, and it comes mated to a 5-speed manual gearbox as standard. The more powerful turbocharged 1.0-litre GDI engine will be tuned to make the same 118 bhp at 6000 rpm and 172 Nm at 1500-4000 rpm. Kia will offer two transmission choices with this engine - 6-speed iMT (Intelligent Manual Transmission) and 7-speed DCT automatic.

The Kia Sonet is offered in two main trims - GT-Line and Tech-Line

The diesel-powered Kia Sonet gets two version - 1.5-litre CRDI WGT (Waste-Gate Turbocharger) and 1.5-litre CRDI VGT (Variable-Geometry Turbocharger). The former is tuned to make 99 bhp at 4000 rpm and a peak torque of 240 Nm at 1500 to 2750 rpm, and it comes mated to a 6-speed manual gearbox as standard. The 1.5-litre CRDI VGT engine makes 113 bhp at 4000 rpm and 250 Nm of peak torque at 1500-2750 rpm, and it comes paired with a 6-speed automatic torque converter.

The Kia Sonet is offered in two main trims - GT-Line and Tech-Line, and while the former will only be offered in one top-spec variant, the GTX+, the latter will come in five key variants - HTE, HTK, HTK+, HTX, and HTX+. The Sonet is priced in India right now at Rs. 6.79 lakh to Rs. 13.19 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).