Third-generation Kia Morning/Picanto - 2021 minor change

The third-generation Kia Morning compact hatchback has been on the road for three years and it's the ideal opportunity for the city car to undergo a minor change for the 2021 model year. Called Morning Urban, the latest minor change adds some more life to the third-generation model while balancing the things that are right with the things that are wrong. Let's take a look at the latest minor change.

2021 Kia Morning

The latest minor change for the Kia Morning features a revised front face complete with a reworked grille, new LED lamps, and new front bumper design while the rear view's slightly changed with new rear lamps, new rear bumpers, and for all the wrong reasons, faux exhaust tips to fool motorists from behind. Quite a tricky little city car, eh?

2021 Kia Morning interior

2021 Kia Morning interior

Before complaining about the facelift's rear design controversy thanks to the faux rear tips bolted to the rear bumpers, let's take a look at the interior because for the minor change, the interior's mildly revised with refined instrumental paneling, revised climate control switches, and an even bigger sat-nav from last time complete with revised UVO into the mainframe. You can even opt-in for optional driver's side seat ventilation to make it feel premium because the interior really feels premium for the drivers.

2021 Kia Morning

The Morning Urban features a brand new Smartstream G 1.0 MPi engine, which replaces the old 1.0L Eco Prime Kappa 3-cylinder engine from the pre-facelifted engine of the old model. Although the power output remains at 76PS, the torque output is down by 1Nm from the old engine, which doesn't mean much for them, and when mated to a 4-speed AT, fuel economy is now 15.7km/L combined, quite an improvement of course.

Safety is the top priority for the minor change and with that, the Morning Urban features a windscreen camera capable of using lane departure warning and lane departure assist as well as blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert. With this, this facelift makes it one of the safest compact cars you can buy.

The Morning Urban starts at 11,750,000 Korean won (around $12,000) and while slightly more expensive than the old one, it's still the cheapest Kia you can buy. 

If you didn't mind about the faux rear tips as well as the torque drop from its new engine and care about its tech and fuel economy, this recently facelifted Morning isn't quite bad at all. It drives nicely all of the time and that's it.

Available colors: Clear White, Milky Beige, Titanium Silver, Shiny Red, Sparkling Silver, Aurora Black Pearl, and Honeybee

Photo: Kia Motors