Holden's light car, the Barina, has been perhaps the most obvious manifestation of what some regard as a back-sliding syndrome afflicting the local manufacturer's imported product range.
The basic problem is not so much the car's South Korean origins as cost-cutting and the age of the design. This is a car that first saw the light of day here in Australia as the Daewoo Kalos back in 2003. That makes it six years old -- and the rest of the VFACTS Light car segment has moved on...
This reviewer recalls driving the Daewoo Kalos way back when and -- relative to its competitors -- it wasn't too bad. Whether time has dulled the memory or it really is a case of the segment progressing in leaps and bounds in the interim, the Barina appears to have regressed. Other than late last year's facelift and safety upgrade (albeit worthwhile), very little about the Barina has changed in a positive way since it was (re)introduced with a Holden badge in 2005.
Even the facelift hardly improves the Barina's looks.
Take for an example the gearshift. Its action is woeful and the first to second shift is slow and sticky, with the engine not winding down on the overrun. Plus the whole setup is further diminished by the shift lever, which is as elegant to use as a quarter staff.
Refinement and build quality are two more major sticking points in the Barina. Interior plastics are hard and tend to squeak as they rub together over bumps and around corners. Some of the switchgear, like the indicator stalk for example, feel 'click-clack' cheap. At least, unlike the Daewoo Kalos, the Barina's interior vinyl doesn't 'pong' atrociously.
There's no left footrest and the clutch take-up of the road test car was so high that we had to adjust the seat some way back from the wheel, making it a stretch for both the steering wheel and the gearshift. In this position, there's negligible room for rear-seat occupants.
There's what you might call adequate headroom in the rear for average-sized adults, but access to the rear is not at all easy in the three-door car. It's about placing the left foot in the footwell and using both hands to drag oneself in through the tight space between B-pillar and driver's seat before pirouetting on the foot already in the footwell, lifting the other foot behind and collapsing awkwardly into the seat. Alright for kids, but not so graceful if you're an adult.
And heaven knows how you would cope if you're a young mum attempting to lift a wriggling toddler into a child seat.
As already mentioned though, the interior space is otherwise fairly commodious. That spaciousness probably comes at the expense of luggage capacity, since the rear compartment is not huge by even the standards of other Light cars.
The seats are firm and flat for the most part. There was no anticipation they would be anything marvellous, but they actually did a fair job of holding the occupant in place during cornering and supported the driver properly -- although they're still not what you would call comfortable for a longer trip.
At 10.06m, according to Holden's specifications, the Barina's turning circle is marginally better than that of the Ford Fiesta's, but the Ford is also ever so slightly longer in the wheelbase.
The Barina's steering, while not up to the benchmark set by the Fiesta, provides some feedback. Response is a bit slow, but the handling, once the car commits to the corner is not bad and the overall grip is pretty good.
It's a bit throttle-sensitive in its handling and tracks through a tighter arc with the power off, but doesn't feel twitchy at any point. As far as a dead basic and cheap car is concerned, it's relatively secure in its dynamics. In fact, the car is closer to neutral than expected.
There's some body roll in corners, but it's bearable.
At open-road speeds, the steering seems just a touch vague. There's some general wind noise and some vibration from the engine, but nothing much else from the road.
That changes once the car leaves the freeway. The audibility of the tyres picks up on any sort of bitumen country road, but it's possibly a general sound insulation problem, rather than the tyres themselves.
The Barina is like a return to the good (bad) old days of Korean NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) -- and a far cry from the latest products of the country such as Kia's Cerato, Hyundai's i30 and the Renault Koleos. In particular, the Holden's engine, which has a throaty sort of note at lower engine speeds, is pretty thrashy above 4000rpm. It just doesn't encourage harder driving.
While it has the sort of user-friendly torque that allows you to change up at low engine speeds on the flat, it's short on power for tackling hills. It struggles to maintain speed on quite common grades around the suburbs and, on one hilly section of country road, would not accelerate in third gear above 4500rpm (approximately 80km/h road speed) with the foot flat to the floor and only the driver on board.
We were wondering whether the problem lay with the five-speed manual transmission's gear ratios, but the final drive and gearing are actually configured for lower-speed running relative to the engine revs. That helps the Barina muster enough grunt to spin a drive wheel away from a standing start on dry bitumen and the in-gear acceleration on the flat seems constant across the rev range. However, as stated, throw a hill the Barina's way and it just seems to resign itself to plodding.
In respect of vision, there's good and bad. The Barina's headlights are actually quite effective on high beam and adequate on low beam, but the C-pillars in the three-door body are an unfortunate hindrance to reverse-parking. Backing the Barina involves more guesswork than similar manoeuvring in a Holden Ute on the Carsales Network test fleet the week before -- and utes are notoriously annoying to back.
The Barina is just possibly the worst car tested in recent memory for lousy field of vision -- and this is a car that stands a 50/50 chance of being driven by mothers up to the local school to pick up the kids.
It's not just a bollard in a carpark or another car you might collect as you're backing.
Much has been written about the Barina and relatively little of it positive. We approached the car with an open-minded view, but this car has disappointed by being everything light cars once were... And hopefully won't be again.
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