AUTOMOTIVE

Setting Sights Low: Irvine-based Kia Motors America has the lowest-priced four-door sedan in the United States for the 1995 model year with its basic Sephia RS. The $8,495 car is one of 19 models listed at less than $10,000 in Automotive News’ catalogue of the base prices of 467 varieties of domestic and imported passenger cars.

Prices range from the $8,085, three-door, three-cylinder Geo Metro, to the $347,200 Rolls-Royce touring limousine.

For bargain hunters, the news isn’t good. Just 4% of the cars are less than $10,000; none come with an automatic transmission or air conditioning, and their base prices don’t include destination charges. If those are added in, only nine of the cars still slip under the $10,000 threshold.

The companies with the most sub-$10,000 models, at four each, are Ford and General Motors’ Chevrolet Geo division.

Of the 27 Ford models, three make up its new Aspire family--made in Korea by Kia Motors Corp. The fourth Ford for less than $10,000 is the base three-door Escort hatchback.

All four of the Chevy Geos--the Geo Metro line--are built in Canada by Suzuki Motor Corp. Including the Geos, Chevrolet has 36 models on the Automotive News list.

Like Kia, Suzuki also has its U.S. subsidiary headquarters in Orange County and placed several cars on the under-$10,000 list.

General Motors’ Saturn unit sells one of its seven models for less than $10,000.

Plymouth, with six models listed, and Dodge, with 14, each have just one car below $10,000: the basic four-door, four-cylinder Neon.

Most of the rest of the lowest-priced models come from Orange County-based importers.

Kia Motors America sells two of its three Sephia models with base prices below $10,000 while American Suzuki, in Brea, lists the base price of both of its Swift model passenger cars at less than $10,000. The Suzuki Swifts are the peppier four-cylinder siblings of the three-door, three-cylinder Geo Metro.

Mitsubishi Motor Sales of America, in Cypress, has one vehicle below $10,000 in its 13-model lineup: the two-door Mirage S. Its parent, Mitsubishi Motor Corp., makes a version of the Mirage in Japan that is sold in the United States by Chrysler Corp.’s Eagle division as the two-door Summit DL--the only one of Eagle’s 13-model lineup to list for less than $10,000.

Fountain Valley-based Hyundai Motor America, which once dominated the low-price category, now lists just one of its nine models, the basic two-door Scoupe sports coupe, for less than $10,000--and it is just $5 under. The 1995 Accent, which replaces the Hyundai Excel that hit the market at less than $5,000 in 1986, has not been priced yet. But all three models in the Accent subcompact line are expected to have base prices less than $10,000.

The only Orange County-based importer with nothing less than $10,000 is Mazda Motor of America. The least expensive of its 14 models, at $11,995, is the four-door Protege DX.

Of Japan’s three largest car makers only two--Toyota and Honda, have U.S. offerings in the under-$10,000 class. Toyota’s base two-door Tercel, at $2 below the mark, is the only one of that company’s 37 U.S. models to qualify, while the $9,750 Civic CX three-door is the only one of Honda’s 27 models to slip under the threshold. The least expensive Nissan is the four-door Altima XE, at $14,799.