ROYAL AFFAIR

We retrace the design inspirations of the Kia Sonet while on a road trip to find out how good it is on the highway

- KARAN SINGH

FOUR HUNDRED YEARS. THAT’S how long it took to build the City Palace in Udaipur. Each crevice is thoughtfully constructed, each walkway meant to throw off enemies and everywhere you look there are stunning paintings. At first the Kia Sonet seems out of place here — a thoroughly modern machine built to make commuting easy, sitting pretty in a palace dating back to 1553. But look closely at the Sonet, and some similarities start to come alive. While it didn’t take four centuries to build the Sonet, there is a lot of intricacy and symmetry in its design, with details inspired from historic monuments just like the Udaipur City Palace, and it’s certainly got a lot more horsepower than the King’s horses did. But why did we go to the City Palace in the first place?

Monumental