It turns out, you don’t need over 200 HP and a rally or racing moniker to break through as a sporty hatchback. In fact, this is even more true if we’re talking about an Estate car.

Generally speaking, Estate owners are either completely indifferent as to how sporty or bland their car looks, or (and this is becoming more and more obvious) they’re just dying to drive one of these dynamic looking family car while crying themselves to sleep at night over not being able to own an Audi RS4 Avant.

OK, that last part may not be true, but still, there is a huge gap in this particular segment for Estate cars to start looking like they mean business.

Up until a few years ago, C-Segment cars such as a Golf Variant, Focus Estate, Astra Caravan, Skoda Octavia Combi and so on, had absolutely no character to them. This was mostly pre-2010. After that with the new generations, they started selling them with sporty exterior packages that had more aggressive spoilers, side skirts, bigger wheels and so on.

Still, now this particular category is booming. Just look at this KIA cee’d SW GT Line for example. It doesn’t have 200 HP. It won’t do 0-100 in less than what you’d really like and it certainly won’t sound as good as it looks.

You’ll probably have to make due with either a new 1.0 liter T-GDi engine or a 1.6 liter CRDi turbodiesel unit, good for about 133 PS and 300 Nm, matched up with KIA’s all new 7-speed Dual Clutch Transmission (DCT).

Now all in all, that’s not a bad configuration for what’s supposed to be a family Estate car, that actually looks like the Estate version of a Hot Hatch.

And this is where the cee’d SW GT Line strikes gold. It looks really well. It’s got LED daytime running lights, sporty bumpers in front and in the back, rear LED lights and a twin exhaust. There’s also a new set of 17″ alloy wheels available, which look pretty good themselves.

The truth of the matter is that Golf R Variant, Octavia RS Combi and Focus ST Sportbreak owners don’t need to worry about being challenged. The cee’d SW GT Line only looks the part, but it’s bark is obviously louder than its bite.

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