Kia Sportage review

Things kick off at £30,170 for the petrol-powered mild hybrid in base-spec 2 trim. The full hybrids are available on GT-Line spec and above, costing from £36,215. Plug-in hybrids attract a premium of around £5k with the cheapest priced from £40,685, although you can pay up to £45,885 for the full fat GT-Line S if you're so inclined. And that’s before options.

That's a big leap in price, and if you're not able to charge the plug-in regularly then there's no chance you'll make back the difference in fuel savings. However, thanks to its zero emissions range it attracts a Benefit-in-Kind company car tax rate of just eight per cent, compared to the 30 per cent you'd be liable for even with the full hybrid. For anyone earning over the 40 per cent tax threshold, that's a significant saving.

That starting price puts it competitively in the mix compared to rivals, with the Citroen C5 Aircross, Seat Ateca and Skoda Karoq coming in slightly cheaper, the Nissan Qashqai, Mazda CX-5 and Toyota C-HR on par, and the likes of the Ford Kuga, Hyundai Tucson, Peugeot 3008, Renault Austral, and (by some way) the Volkswagen Tiguan all starting over £30k.

For private buyers, a two-wheel drive hybrid in 3 spec is probably the sweet spot of the Sportage line-up, setting you back £37,215. This gets 18in alloys, cloth and leather seats, heated steering wheel and front seats, smart cruise control, three-zone climate control, the 12.3in touchscreen and instrument clusters, a rear-view monitor and those handy extra USB-Cs.

If aesthetics matter to you, you might be able to justify the extra couple of grand for the Shadow Edition, with its uber-cool, matte paint job (you can have it in grey, black or green) and fake-cow-bedecked seats. Aside from a few black gloss styling swaps though, you don’t get much that isn’t already on the ‘3’. Best stick with that.

Kia's finance calculator can be tweaked depending on your preferred annual mileage and deposit budget, but stick £5,000 down on a hybrid '3' and you're looking at monthly repayments of £445 over three years, with interest at just over three per cent APR.

It's worth noting that all Sportages come with Kia’s seven-year/100,000-mile warranty too. Few other manufacturers promise to guarantee a car for that amount of time or mileage.