Kia Sorento

The Kia Sorento is a budget SUV that’s short on pretension and long in the tooth. Despite a recent facelift it isn’t the most exciting thing in the world. (That’s our entry for understatement of the year, by the way).

• Comfort

  Proof that soft suspension doesn't necessarily mean you'll be comfortable in the thing, the Sorento does absorb bumps, but pitches and flops about so much it leaves you feeling a tad queasy. Drive it slowly and it's passable. Really slowly, mind.

  

• Performance

  You can have two engines, 125Kw, 2.5-litre turbo diesel or a 180Kw 3.3-litre V6. One with 0-100km/h coming up in 2017 and the other after the Apocolypse. Both variants will top out at around 110mph. The engine's are bit noisy, with the diesel being the worst. The 2.5DT suffers from turbo lag so you'll be waiting in no man's land half the time, but otherwise it's powerful enough to do the job.

  

• Cool

  As a furnace.

  

• Quality

  A redesigned dash and better quality materials can't disguise the fact that this is getting to be a mouldy geriatric in car terms. The general build quality shows improvement over previous models though.

  

• Handling

  The Sorento used to be stiffened to the point of injury to cope with on-road work. Not great. To solve that problem in the latest generation Kia has veered in the opposite direction, and made the suspension from blancmange. Fine for straight-line wallowing, absolutely useless for going around pesky things like corners.

  

• Practicality

  Keeping with the boxy theme, the Sorento has plenty of head and shoulder room for passengers and does a decent impression of a van when you fold the seats down - there's nearly 2000litres of capacity available. Proper cavernous.

  

• Running costs

  You do get a five-year all-in service deal that negates the loss (though doesn't help the planet). Residuals are OK. For a Kia.