The 2016 Kia K900 comes with a standard 3.8-liter gasoline V-6 engine (311 horsepower, 293 pound-feet of torque). The option package of advanced safety features is worth its cost. (Kia Motors America, Inc./Kia Motors America, Inc.)

Something is changing . . . rapidly.

Traditional notions of automotive luxury and prestige are being surpassed by rapid advances in technology.

These advances in technology are being rapidly introduced into new cars and trucks.

Rapid introduction of those technical features — new and more informative head-up displays on vehicle windshields, better blind-side monitoring, more effective forward-collision mitigation — is being accompanied by declining costs, giving more vehicle manufacturers the chance to popularize the technology and present it as standard equipment.

The result is that technologies that once were the sole province of the most expensive and exclusive vehicles now can be found up and down new car and truck lines of all makes.

Car manufacturers not mired in antiquated ideas of luxury and prestige are taking advantage. It is not a matter of cheapness. It is an answer to very real questions about value.

Witness the 2016 Kia K900 sedan. It is an excellent full-size, rear-wheel-drive luxury sedan, competitive in almost every way with its pricier European rivals, especially so in advanced electronic safety technology.

It does not have the panache of an Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar or Volvo. Too bad. Panache still matters in the luxury market.

Panache is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. It is the superior fit of an Audi interior. It is the sheen — preferably the lack thereof — and feel and thickness of selected wood trim. It is the intuitiveness of advanced electronic driver-assistance systems.

An Audi is an Audi. A Mercedes-Benz is a Mercedes-Benz. Those cars excel in fit and finish. You touch them, see the quality of their materials, you know them.

But they all are being pushed from behind by South Korean automobile manufacturers such as Hyundai and Kia, which apparently have decided that technological items and the discernible improvements they bring, done at an attractive price, are the way to increase their share of the traditional luxury automobile market.

They are succeeding by appealing to consumer common sense. To wit: offer solid value instead of glitzy dross.

Ignore stylish gimmicks. Focus on technologies that improve driving ease and safety at an affordable cost. Look at the clever, understandable, very helpful head-up display system in the K900. It presents the extant local speed limit along with your actual cruising speed, right before your eyes. It combines lane-departure warning and blind-side monitoring. The K900’s forward-collision mitigation system is one of the most effective in the business.

But it has no panache, not in the traditional sense of the word. It’s a Kia, after all. The car’s wood trim has a glossy, high sheen, almost like plastic. Fit and finish are inarguably good, but lacking in the obsession painfully evident in Audi and Mercedes-Benz cars.

The K900, equipped with a standard 3.8-liter gasoline V-6 engine (311 horsepower, 293 pound-feet of torque) linked to an eight-speed automatic transmission, drives nicely — certainly pleasing to most of us who aren’t holding on to fantasies of racetrack glory.

I like it. Traditional luxury purveyors should take this one seriously.