Kia Picanto shows that a hatchback can be as practical as an SUV

As practicality has played a huge role in making Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) so popular, hatchbacks are actually the original SUVs.

In the good old days when sedans where the go-to vehicle of the time, a hatchback offered a more practical alternative. A tailgate bigger than that of a sedan gave you more access to your luggage, with the additional assistance of a removable boot cover and forward-folded rear seats.

Even though SUVs have become the vehicle of choice, hatchbacks might not always offer the same ground clearance, but their practical storage solutions remains a huge virtue. This was proven time and again by our long-term Kia Picanto EX manual over the December holidays.

ALSO READ: Old vs new: My Kia Picanto was perfect for what I needed – but it’s time for an upgrade

Don’t underestimate Kia Picanto

A car with five seats that measures only 3.6 metres in length and offers a mere 255 litres of boot space is never going to make a family holiday car and that is exactly we we didn’t attempt such things. But, with a little tweaking of its seating configuration, can prove to be much more than a little city commuter.

It is for that very same reason that Kia offers the Picanto Runner, a tweaked version of the hatch offered as a light commercial vehicle. The Runner has no rear seat and it features a rubber floor with tie-down hooks and netting between the front seats and the rear.

ALSO READ: Kia Picanto lives up to promise of being a frugal little city slicker

Why do they do it? Because with the rear seats folded flat the standard Kia Picanto offers all of 1 010 litres of space or in other words, a cubic metre. To put that into perspective, that is volume from the loadbin floor to the edge of the loadbox of a one-ton bakkie.

Hitting the golf course

In standard guise the Picanto does not feature tie-down hooks and a rubber floor underneath your cargo, but those things are really not needed for the odd occasion you need to move something big.

The 60/40 rear seat split gives you more options. We managed to fit two golf bags in this way with space left for a teenage caddie on the back seat to assist the two-ball in front.

And the beauty of using this little hatch to move big things is that it doesn’t come with same kind of fuel bill bigger light commercial vehicles comes with. The 62kW/122Nm 1.2-litre naturally aspirated engine has only sipped 5.6 litres of petrol for every 100km over the course of nearly 3 000km.

Who said you can’t have the best of both worlds?