WASHINGTON — I’ve changed. Traditional automotive luxury no longer impresses me.

Expensive vehicles that get relatively few miles per gallon leave me cold. They make no sense at all. The same goes for automobiles that can move from 0 to 60 miles per hour at lightning speed. What is the point?

I and the two co-producers of this column have gotten into trouble going faster than the law allows. My wife cried her way out of a ticket; Ria Manglapus, this column’s associate for vehicle evaluations, was going way too fast to escape penalty. Luckily, it was her first-ever speeding offense, and her penalty was reduced.

I’ve paid several speeding fines. There is nothing pretty, honorable, glorious or fun about that waste. It was salary and time ill-spent. I’ve learned my lesson, and it is this: A car or truck does not have to be ridiculously expensive, nor excessively powerful and fast in order to be enjoyed.

It could be as spectacularly ordinary as this week’s subject vehicle — the 2008 Kia Rondo wagon.

I dismissed the Rondo a year ago, having succumbed more to its banality than I was seduced by what turns out to be its many virtues.

But that was before soaring U.S. fuel prices and a collapsing national economy exposed the ugliness of motorized greed. My associates and I thus decided to take another look at the Rondo, to evaluate it in the context of a vehicle designed to deliver maximum good at minimum cost. We like what we found the second time around.

First, overall craftsmanship is excellent. Fit and finish are on point. Interior materials are high-quality.

Second, there is the matter of thoughtfulness, such as the manner in which an interior is laid out. In the Rondo, it’s all good. All gauges, dials and switches are easily readable and accessible. There are multiple, well-formed storage bins. The middle and rear seats are easy to raise and lower; and when they are lowered, they fall flat, creating the perfect load floor.

Third, Kia, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Hyundai Motor, takes a democratic approach to safety — making premium protective technology available in a modestly priced vehicle. Standard safety equipment in the Rondo includes four-wheel disc brakes with antilock protection; side air bags with full-length ceiling bags protecting the heads and necks of passengers in the middle and the rear; active head restraints designed to reduce the possibility of whiplash in a rear-end collision; electronic stability control, and a tire-pressure monitoring system.

As a result, the Rondo gets the U.S. government’s top rating — five stars — for frontal crash protection for driver and passenger. It gets a five-star side-crash protection rating for the front-seat passenger and a four-star side-crash protection rating for passengers in the rear. The Rondo also gets a good rollover protection grade — four stars from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, all for a little front-wheel-drive wagon with a base price near $20,000.

The Rondo is offered with an economical 162-horsepower, inline four-cylinder engine and a more authoritative 182-horsepower V-6. Both engines get the job done. The V-6, tested for this column, adds some joy to the work.

The Rondo isn’t fancy. But it is substantial. That makes it a solid bargain in the current economic environment. And there’s something remarkably attractive about that.

2008 Kia Rondo

Complaints: The Rondo has seats for seven. But the two rearmost seats are usable only for very tiny people.

Ride, acceleration and handling: There is nothing exceptional here — good or bad. The Rondo offers reliable, decent performance in all three categories.

Head-turning quotient: It is a little wagon that resembles a minivan. The styling is vanilla.

Body style/layout: The Rondo is a front-engine, front-wheel-drive, compact family wagon with four side doors and a rear hatch. Built on a compact car platform, it is designed primarily for urban-suburban commuting.

Engine/transmission: The tested Rondo EX comes with a 2.7-liter, 24-valve V-6 that develops 182 horsepower at 6,000 revolutions per minute and 182 foot-pounds of torque at 4,000 rpm. The engine is mated to a five-speed transmission that can be shifted automatically or manually.

Capacities: Maximum cargo capacity is 35 cubic feet with the rear seats down. The Rondo can be equipped to tow a trailer weighing 1,000 pounds. Its fuel tank holds 15.8 gallons of recommended regular unleaded gasoline.

Mileage: You are looking at 18 miles per gallon in the city and 26 mpg on the highway with the V-6 engine. The inline four-cylinder model increases those numbers by 1 mile per gallon in the city with little significant advantage on the highway.

Safety: Kia is to be commended for producing affordable vehicles with premium safety technology — four-wheel disc brakes with antilock protection, electronic brake-force distribution, active head restraints, side and head air bags, electronic stability control — offered as standard equipment.

Safety concern: The third-row seats are a $500 option. Don’t buy them. Those seats are too close to the rear hatch, making their occupants especially vulnerable in a rear-end collision.

Price: The base price on the 2008 Kia Rondo EX V-6 is $20,195. Dealer’s invoice price on that model is $18,895. Price as tested is $24,045, including $3,250 in options . Dealer’s price as tested is $22,295. The Rondo is being offered with a $2,000 rebate. Prices are sourced from Kia, Edmunds.com and Cars.com, an affiliate of The Washington Post.

Purse-strings note: The Rondo is an excellent, affordable urban wagon with good reliability and safety and reasonable fuel economy. It gets a strong “buy” recommendation here.