Kia wanted to make the new 2006 Sedona fun to drive, so it installed a powerful engine, a manual-shift automatic transmission, a suspension tuned for improved handling, and larger brakes for better stopping ability. Don’t take this to mean that the new Sedona is a performance vehicle, because it’s not. But it’s no penalty box, either, as we learned during our one-day test drive behind the wheels of a 2006 Kia Sedona LX with the optional DVD entertainment system and an EX with the optional Luxury Package.

Smooth, responsive, and refined, the 2006 Kia Sedona’s new 3.8-liter V6 is also powerful enough to break the front tires loose accelerating around turns. Open it up, and you’ll even hear a pleasantly aggressive growl from behind the firewall. The five-speed automatic transmission features Kia’s Sportmatic manual gear selection, with which the driver taps the gear selector up for upshifts and down for downshifts. We didn’t use this much – the Sedona is a minivan, after all – and when we did, upshifts lagged a bit but downshifts occurred without delay. Driven normally, the Sedona’s transmission shifts unobtrusively, and it includes grade-logic control to hold a gear on steep ascents to keep hunting to a minimum and on steep descents to increase engine braking. During our drive in the Sedona EX, we averaged 17.7 mpg in a mix of city and highway in mountainous northeastern San Diego County.

Falling somewhere between the taut Honda Odyssey and the soft Toyota Sienna, the 2006 Kia Sedona’s suspension provides a great blend of ride and handling, but occasionally the driver can feel a rubbery lack of wheel control over bad pavement. It’s not harsh, and it’s not loud, and it could probably be erased altogether with additional tuning. Handling is impressive for a minivan, as we discovered during a downhill run from the Palomar Mountain area that included multiple 25-mph hairpin turns. Pitching the Sedona into those hairpins at twice the recommended speed resulted in plenty of body roll and tire scrub, but in high-speed sweepers the 2006 Kia Sedona’s weight transitions predictably and the tires offer good grip. The Sedona LX rides on P225/70R16 Hankook Optimos while the EX receives P235/60R17 Michelin Energy tires – each brand produced a quiet ride and entertaining levels of grip while giving plenty of warning about approaching limits.

Though Kia has upsized the Sedona’s brakes for 2006, and while they feature excellent pedal feel and modulation, they faded a bit during our high-speed downhill run. Of course, 99.9-percent of Sedona owners will never drive the van like we did, so this is likely a non-issue. In keeping with the Sedona’s sporty intent, steering effort is purposely dialed in on the heavy side regardless of speed, but in our opinion, the steering wheel requires too much effort to spin, especially at parking speeds. Because the region where we drove the Sedona was buffeted by strong Santa Ana winds that constantly tugged at the van, we cannot comment about on-center feel, but we’ll tell you this: even traveling into the gusts, the Sedona was much quieter inside than most of its competition.

This quietude is perhaps the most impressive thing about how this box on wheels drives. Most minivans serve as echo chambers for powertrain, suspension, road, and wind noise, but the 2006 Kia Sedona is comparatively silent when underway. It’s much easier to carry on a conversation in the Sedona than in the relatively loud Dodge Grand Caravan and Honda Odyssey. Even when cruising at 80 mph on grooved pavement, road and engine noise were virtually absent. In our experience, only the Toyota Sienna comes close to delivering this kind of cabin isolation, and at comparatively higher prices.