Kia Picanto vs Holden Spark

What's the difference?

If you're feeling the cost of living sting, there's a good chance you've scaled back your ambitions for your next new car. You may have even looked at some of Australia's most affordable brand-new vehicles and the Kia Picanto is one of them.

It's one of the few brand-new options left with a before-on-roads starting price of under $20,000 and it's one of the few non-performance models left which can still be chosen as a manual.

It's one thing to be affordable, though, and quite another to be good value - so does the freshly updated 2024 Picanto have what it takes to stack up against more expensive options? Let's take a look.

Andrew Chesterton road tests and reviews the updated Holden Spark LT with specs, fuel consumption and verdict.

The micro-car segment in Australia has driven off a cliff. We are shunning our smallest cars in a way we never have before, and nobody seems to be entirely sure why.

The strength of the second-hand market is one suspected culprit, while another is the tempting price point of vehicles that are one size bigger, with city-car shoppers able to upsize for relative peanuts.

Whatever the reason, the segment is stuck in neutral and halfway along Struggle Street. It needs a spark. And Holden's hoping theirs is just the ticket.

Now you might recognise it as a Barina, but Holden dropped that part of the moniker when this new model launched in March. It is now simply known as the Holden Spark, tested here in top-spec LT guise and wearing a sticker price of $18,990. It sits above only the entry-level, bargain-basement LS ($13,990 manual, $15,690 automatic) in the two-model Spark range.

Designed and built in Korea, the Spark seems to have little to do with our unique marketplace, but Holden promises us this new model couldn't be more dinky-di if it ran on vegemite. Australia had crucial input into its design in Korea, while Holden's Aussie engineers put the new model though its paces on the company's proving ground, tweaking the suspension and steering for Australia's road surfaces.

So the question now is, is the Spark bright enough to lure buyers back to the micro-car segment?