If you were to ask a panel of automotive journalists to select the ugliest car for sale in the U.S. today, they'd probably end up selecting the Kia Amanti.

Oh, it would be a long discussion.  A lot of candidates would be nominated. The Dodge Avenger would have its defenders. The Acura TL would win some votes. But it's just hard to match the awkward style of the Amanti - it looks as though a grade-schooler used rubber cement to hold together parts of a 1980's Mercedes, a mid-90's Lexus and a Ford Crown Victoria taxi cab.

It would be hard for Kia designers to do any worse. But its days are numbered. And its replacement, we're happy to report, is a pretty sharp-looking car.

Autoblog reports, "Kia has dropped the first official photos of its new top of the line sedan," which will be known as the Cadenza in the U.S., "and to our eye that's a good thing after viewing the rather ungainly Amanti for the last several years. The Cadenza carries forward the design language that we've seen on recent Kia concept and production cars like the Forte and second generation Sorento. The nose gets a bit more sculpting than the compact sedan, and the overall effect is much more upscale than before."

Jalopnik comments, "It's a visual leap from the current Amanti," but, they caution, "It's not going to be an engineering one."

The U.K.'s Carscoop thinks the Cadenza "will most probably be offered with a 2.4-liter four-cylinder...engine with direct-injection churning out about 200 HP and the Kia/Hyundai Lambda V6."

In an earlier report, Motor Trend had speculated that the Amanti's replacement would "switch from front-wheel-drive to parent company Hyundai's Genesis rear-wheel-drive platform." Kia's announcement, however, gave no indication that the Cadenza would be rear-wheel-drive.

Western journalists haven't seen the car's interior yet. Carscoop reports, "Kia says that highlights include the ‘futuristic floating dashboard and an interior mood lighting strip that runs along the dashboard to the door trim.'" Options will include "a heated steering wheel (for winter driving in cold markets), powered extendable seat cushions (for extra thigh support), automatic defogging of the windshield and ventilated front seats (for cool comfort in hot markets)."

If you're in the market for a new car, check out the U.S. News rankings of this year's best cars as well as this month's best car deals.