As a Kia Optima Sportswagon, Motability customer, I find this very disappointing, from my point of view, as a Spina Bifida/ Paraplegic who needs a large automatic estate car.
There are very few suitable large estate cars around and especially, as even fewer make it on to the Motability list. Unfortunately SUV’s are just not suitable for me as they are too high for transferring in and out of from my wheelchair.
I am totally happy with my one year old Optima Sportwagon (by the way, they do a saloon as well, contrary to Autocar’s report) and I intend to keep it for another four years, however I just wish Motability would make a greater effort to get all available estate cars (within their unnecessarily restricted structure) on their list.
There is little justification for Motability, not make an all out effort to provide suitable cars for ALL their potential customers. I wonder how much difference it would have made if Motability would have made the AP’s lower on the very well specked Optima range. I am not saying it in itself would have encouraged Kia to make the next generation available, but with only 14,000 sales in 2018, who knows maybe another 1,000 sales might have made a difference.
The 7 year warranty, must be a help to Motability, with the cars still being under warranty if customers like myself keep the car for five years, or even for Motability selling the cars after three years with another 4 years warranty still left on the car.
By the way has anybody seen pictures of the next model Optima, even if it is not going to be that much use to us.