► We drive the all-new Kia Sportage
► High level of quality for price
► 1.6-litre petrol the pick of the bunch
View four generations of Sportage on parade and it’s easy to see how far Kia has come in just 15 years. With record sales year on year, the company’s UK image has been transformed over the last decade, and the Sportage is fundamental to its future aspirations.
But it is, surely, design that drives image, and – studying those four Sportage variants – it strikes me that the third and fourth generation cars are placed the wrong way round in the stylistic pecking order.
Kia’s designers have here concentrated so hard on making the corporate, tiger nose grille yell ‘BRAND’ that they’ve forgotten to make the front good looking. Elements once seamlessly integrated into the svelte smile of the effortlessly stylish are now divorced; the upshot a more prosaic, Mr Potato Head exercise in facial feature dispersal.
On board, the story is the same. Short on the articulation evident in the previous generation, the dashboard offers a bland march of big buttons underneath a slush-moulded, soft-touch dashboard top which you’ll never touch – the bits you will touch executed in unforgiving, animal grain plastics.
However, all is notably clear and clean, with a perceptible hike in quality reinforced by the application of more brushed metal and less chrome. And, in a range priced from £17,995 to £31,495, levels of standard equipment are laudably high.
The front seats are comfortable and, but for an intrusive headrest which relentlessly rubbed me up the wrong way, the driving position respectable. There’s ample room in the back, where most of a 30mm increase in wheelbase appears to have landed, but not much of a view out thanks to rising waistline ubiquity.
Of four powerplants available, a 1.7-litre turbodiesel and a newly installed 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol engine will be the major UK players; the former targeting fleet sales, the latter private buyers. Those requiring four-wheel drive must opt for the 1.6-litre turbo, or a 2.0 turbodiesel with a choice of power outputs.
All variants benefit from a sizeable 39% increase in torsional rigidity and a new power- steering system with the electric motor mounted directly to the rack. And that – allied to front MacPherson strut and rear multi-link suspension systems mounted on lightweight subframes to better isolate occupants from the road – adds up the new Sportage’s strongest suit: a substantial stride forwards in driving dynamics.
Both 114bhp 1.7-litre and 182bhp 2.0-litre turbodiesels are pleasant to drive, feel tidily tenacious and ride particularly well on France’s ruthlessly tamped tarmac; gone are the previous car’s halibut-lobbed-on-hotplate body control issues.
Pick of the bunch, though, is the 174bhp 1.6- litre turbo petrol unit mated to an admirably slick six-speed manual transmission. With mildly beefed up suspension, less engine weight in the bows and all-wheel drive, this version feels decidedly more happy than the diesel boulevardiers to change direction in a hurry.
The steering is nicely weighted, offering pleasing sharpness yet not a great deal of feedback. And, though the ride quality suffers a fraction on stiffer springing, the Sportage is about as much fun as any comparably sized SUV to chuck around. More’s the pity it no longer looks the part.
The specs: Kia Sportage 1.6 T-GDi GT-Line Manual
Price: £24,350
Engine: 1591cc turbocharged 4-cyl, 174bhp @ 5500rpm, 195lb ft @ 1500-4500rpm
Transmission: 6-speed manual, all-wheel drive
Performance: 9.2 sec 0-62mph, 126mph, 37.2mpg, 177g/km CO2
Weight: 1583kg
On Sale: Now
Love: Improved body control, ride quality and handling
Hate: Clunky styling, headrest intrusion
Verdict: Worse to look at, much better to drive
Rating: ***
Read more from the April 2016 issue of CAR magazine