A 2001 Kia Magentis 2.5 V6 SE and a 1999 Proton Satria GTI. Not exactly your typical convoy, but then, the Festival of the Unexceptional isn’t your typical classic car show.
When I recently enjoyed a couple of hours with the Magentis, it was for a bit of fun – a YouTube video, a taste of forgotten Korean luxury. I didn’t expect to spend 21 hours in it. Nor did I expect it to become one of my most successful videos in recent years (relatively speaking – this is Petrolblog, after all).
But that’s what happened. The plan? Drive 280 miles from Devon to Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire for the big day, with my eldest son following in his Proton. We set off at 3am, in darkness, anticipation and trepidation. The West Midlands greeted us with a biblical downpour so heavy the Proton vanished in the spray. Thankfully, it was running on a set of new Davanti tyres with a strong wet grip rating – quite reassuring when your son is following behind in an old hot hatch from the days before driver assistance systems and Euro NCAP star ratings. It could have been a scene from The Fog, had The Fog starred a 2.5 V6 Magentis with vague steering and a driver's door card that kept trying to shed its ruched leather panel.
What is comfort, anyway?
You don’t so much drive a Kia Magentis as issue gentle suggestions and wait for the car to respond – eventually. The brakes are lethargic. The throttle is hesitant. Even the Porsche-developed automatic transmission needs a mug of coffee and a dose of encouragement before each shift. At 3am, both of us were a little slow off the mark.
But there’s something oddly charming about its refusal to rush. The Magentis is a car that makes a case for stillness, for deliberation. It’s almost luxurious – in that slightly flimsy, cost-conscious way early-2000s Korean cars often were. The climate control is essentially binary: arctic or furnace. The fuel gauge drops like a stone. And the volume knob likes to surprise with unexpected silence or sudden shouting. Which is kind of like the way the 2.5-litre V6 engine behaves: subtle and discreet when cruising, but howling like an excitable wolf when you're pressing on.
Grimsthorpe, rain and ruched leather
Arriving at Grimsthorpe, we were met with miserable weather and glorious mediocrity. The cars were great, but the real highlight? Catching up with an old schoolmate, his brother, and two of his kids. We wandered around the soggy grass, dodging showers and chatting about the good old days – like when we owned Ford Capris before they were cool, prices went silly and the nostalgia tax kicked in. He had a brown Austin Metro back in the day. It was deeply uncool then. Now? It would’ve fitted right in among the beige wonders and forgotten saloons.
That’s what makes the Festival of the Unexceptional so special. It's not just about the cars – it's about remembering a time when cars didn’t need to be impressive to be important. When a £900 Capri, a brown Metro or a £30 Daihatsu Charade was your world. When your dream car might have been whatever was sat outside your neighbour’s house with fading paint and wheel trims clinging on for dear life.
And I got stung by a wasp. My right arm looked like Popeye’s by mid-afternoon. Just the kind of souvenir you want from a concours event for the unloved.
Into the Fens and onto the Fosse
We left the event at 3pm, making a detour into the Fens to collect my Mum from a brief stay in Lincolnshire. Picking her up in a Korean saloon felt right, like a minicab reuniting the generations. From there, we headed to the Fosse Way to return home, with a pit stop at Caffeine & Machine, where we found ourselves gatecrashing a Japanese performance car meet.
The Kia stood out like… well, a Magentis at a Japanese performance car meet. Polite interest, mostly from confused onlookers. The Proton, however, was a star. People swarmed it before the ignition was even off. That Mitsubishi DNA shines through – it feels JDM, albeit with a dollop of Lotus engineering. My 76-year-old Mum approved. Three generations, one improbable hot hatch. I think my son’s still smiling.
And the Fosse Way is fast becoming my favourite route home. The Magentis felt at home on the Roman road, where bends are minimal and a steady 60mph can be maintained between the villages and junctions. Perfect wafting conditions for a car that handles corners like a hippopotamus on ice. Good for the fuel economy, too, with the gauge dropping with less vigour than it did on the morning's motorways.
A word on the Magentis and Kia's stratospheric rise
Huge thanks to Kia UK for the loan of the Magentis, which is a bold and brilliant choice for the heritage fleet. The car turned heads – not always for the reasons you'd expect, but that’s the point. It sparked conversations, raised eyebrows and got as much attention as some of the pristine concours classics parked on the gravel outside the castle. People love an underdog, especially when it's a V6 luxo-barge from an era when Kia was still finding its feet in the UK market.
Driving the Magentis made me realise just how far Kia has come in 25 years. From ruched leather trim that needs elbowing back into place to class-leading warranties and impressively engineered electric cars – it's a transformation. If today’s EV6 or Sorento had a door panel working loose (unlikely, but go with me), it’d be covered for seven years. That’s progress.
It’s also worth celebrating that Kia is one of the few manufacturers actively preserving its not-so-glorious past. While others focus only on their icons, Kia has leaned into the weird, the awkward and the forgettable. That takes confidence. And it makes events like this – and blogs like this – all the better for it.
Final thoughts
In a world of performance stats, Nürburgring lap times and perfectly detailed Instagram builds, the Festival of the Unexceptional – and cars like the Kia Magentis – offer something more valuable: stories. Real journeys. Real cars. Real people. A soggy wander around a Lincolnshire lawn becomes a time machine, taking you back to the Capris, Metros and mates from decades ago.
This wasn’t a road trip in a hero car. It was a 280-mile pilgrimage in an unloved saloon and a forgotten hot hatch – with a wasp sting, a petrol warning light and a detour to pick up Mum thrown in for good measure. An unlikely couple of cars, perhaps, but more memories for the memory bank – and proof that sometimes, the most unexceptional journeys are the ones that stick with you.
