Pizza is great. No arguments there. But once you carpet bomb an already delicious pizza with your favorite toppings, well, now that’s magic. It’s a bit like the concept of a sports sedan. Start with something with space for the family and enough room for your trips, be it of the shopping or road variety. Add ballistic performance and some pantomime. It’s a formula as delicious as your favorite pizza pie, and there’s no shortage of excellent sports sedan options spanning the decades.Every once in a while, a competent sports sedan comes from a wholly unexpected source. Not a legacy, but a performance-oriented four-door newcomer. That’s the case with this Korean prizefighter. It brought some serious firepower to the compact sports sedan market. But even with muscle, optional all-wheel drive, and a sporty look, it simply didn’t motivate American buyers to the same extent as the BMW 3 Series. The Merits Of The Sports Sedan BMW You could keep a sports car and a family-hauling sedan or SUV in your garage. Two vehicles. Two insurance policies. During the week, you drive your four-door workhorse. Then, when Friday night mercifully arrives, you can take your beloved little sports car out for a spin. Sure, you could do that. Or you could go for a sports sedan. For starters, a good sports sedan is practical. Four doors, seating enough for five (in a pinch), and a usable trunk. But, when requested, the performance-oriented sedan will prompt smiles and keep up with thoroughbred sports cars. BMW Has It Down — But It’s Not Alone BMW Fortunately for those fans with aspirations of luxury sports sedan ownership, the segment boasts many new and used options. The Audi S5, the Cadillac CT4-V, and the Alfa Romeo Giulia, to name a few. Then there’s BMW. When it comes to compact sports sedans, the 3 Series and its spicier, buck-toothed segment chum, the M3, are some of the most esteemed names in the mix.BMW Don’t want (or need) two doors? The 4 Series and M4 deliver. If that wasn’t enough, the 4 Series is also available as a four-door Gran Coupe. But even with its history of super-powered sports sedans, the Bavarian marque doesn’t have a monopoly on fun-to-drive four-doors. And between 2017 and 2023, the 3 Series got some competition from an unexpected name: Kia. The Kia Stinger Was An Underrated Sports Sedan Kia Media Granted, your typical car enthusiast likely doesn’t utter the words “Kia” and “performance car” in the same breath as often as they might reference a BMW. But nobody told the Korean automaker when it rolled out the Kia Stinger as a 2018 model. The Stinger was less of a sober family hauler and more of a throaty athlete. A world-class boxer in a sensible outfit. It’s certainly not like anything Kia had produced before, and it was the brand’s first entry into the category. It’s a competitive space, too.Kia When it was new, the Kia Stinger had the venerable BMW 3 Series to contend with, and that’s a tall order. After all, the 3 Series has been one of the last words in the compact executive segment for over 50 years. But even with the tenured 3 Series in the mix, the Stinger is a performer. For the latest year, both models were available, 2023, the Kia and the BMW offered turbocharged inline-four engines and six-cylinder engines. The four-pot Stinger outmuscles the 330i, producing 300 horsepower to the BMW’s 255 ponies. Though the Stinger’s range-topping AWD V6 option isn’t quite as quick on its feet as the 340i xDrive, the Kia undercut the 3 Series’ starting price at every trim level. Not too shabby. Twin-Turbo V6 Power Kia Media When Kia debuted the Stinger as a 2018 model, it packed a 255-horsepower, turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four-cylinder engine as its base offering. However, for the 2022 model year, the entry-level Stinger GT-Line got a larger, more potent 2.5-liter engine with 300 horsepower on tap.That said, a gutsy, sonorous twin-turbocharged 3.3-liter V6 is the Stinger’s real party piece. Kia claims a factory horsepower rating of 368 ponies in later models, up from 365 in 2018. Rear-wheel drive is an option, though the Stinger’s all-wheel drive system produces the snappier sprints to 60 mph. In testing, the 2022 Kia Stinger GT2 AWD managed to hit 60 mph from a standstill in just 4.6 seconds. With the twin-turbo V6 under the hood, the Stinger is a proper sports sedan. All-Wheeled Grip, Active Exhaust Kia Media Kia’s resident sports sedan offered a choice of RWD or AWD, and while sending power to the rear wheels made for more tail-happy shenanigans, the AWD system produced the best results. It also lends itself better to driving in inclement weather, especially with the addition of staggered all-season tires. 2023 Kia Stinger GT2 AWD Specs That said, the added grip isn’t without compromise. To name a few, the AWD Stinger GT2 lost the more aggressive summer rubber, dropped its top speed to 149 mph, and gained about 200 pounds. On the other hand, an active exhaust system provides a snarl, bark, and song you simply won’t find on anything else with a Kia badge. Not A Sales Success Kia Media So, let’s recap here. The Kia Stinger was cheaper and just as riotous as many of its Bimmer rivals. By that logic, it should have been a sales success, right? Not so much. In the Stinger's debut model year of 2018, Kia sold 16,806 of the sports sedan. The 3 Series? BMW sold 44,578 of the things that same year.Kia Media By 2023, annual Stinger sales had plummeted to 5,452, a paltry number compared to the BMW 3 Series’ 33,816 U.S. market sales. According to GoodCarBadCar sales data, Kia sold just 70,868 Stingers to American buyers from 2017 to 2024. Not even a five-year, 60,000-mile basic warranty could bump up the Stinger’s American market sales. So, Should You Buy One? Kia Media Today, a 2018 Kia Stinger GT2 has a typical listing price of $23,310. That’s half of its original $50,100 starting price. It’s a bona fide performance bargain. If you can live without the cachet of a BMW badge, the Stinger’s twin-turbo V6 delights for less. And, as of this writing, a couple of the latest models might still have some basic warranty intact.Sources: Kia Media, GoodCarBadCar