Maybe Kia are just protecting buyers from themselves and rampant depreciation from speccing a car in some awful shade of green (Allegro LE anyone), brown or pink?

Plenty of good colours to offer that don't ensure greater depreciation.

May be, but Mazda don't give ANY choice on interior trim unless you buy the top-of-the-range model (Sport), and even then its only two (expensive) varieties of leather seats. Not even three or four seat trim patterns/colours like they used to, two for the lower grades, three for the middle/upper and leather as an option on the top two grades.

You'd find it difficult (without looking at the wheel/tyres) to spot the difference between a lower range model and the top-spec one (about £3k between them for the same engine spec). It wouldn't be so bad if the cloth seat covers were actually nice (bland at best - I don't like them, and I don't want to pay for the Sport spec and its hard-riding/expensive 18in wheels/tyres to get a seat cover look I like [two-tone leather]). Why they could keep the nice black cloth seats with the small shiny blue or red [my Mazda3] dots I don't know - far better than the grey stripes (my mode's similar option with blue stripes was horrid). Still, better than the tartan carp VW Golf GTi owners get as 'standard' (I've seen better looking 'mum' bags with that 'cloth').

If I wanted ral cheapie no-frills, no-options motoing I would choose a Dacia or suchlike. Even KIA isn't the lower end of the market any more, and should (as should Mazda) be offering a reasonable range of no-cost options on the middle/upper middle of the ranges of their cars. Some of these issues are actually stopping me from considering some makes/cars unless they change specs. I wonder if other people are doing the same?

The ride may be fine when new, but once the suspension 'wears in', you start to feel the bumps more on any car, but more so on very low profile tyres where there's far less air cushioning your ride, making the suspension work far harder, and presumably wearing it out quicker.

I also do not wish to have to pay well over £500 for a replacement set of tyres every 2-3 years (they last less than higher profile ones I find) when I could get a better ride on 16in or 17in rims (4 tyres costing about £300 fitted) and notice no difference (except in snow when it would be far better) in handling unless I thrashed the living daylights out of the car round a track.

I don't wish for German levels of options, but at least a reasonable number (remember - only one on the seat covers for people not wishing to/being able to afford the Sport model to get leather seats [which not everyone wants]) to choose from, as they had on the mk1. Not entirely unreasonable.