Kia Sportage review

On first impressions, the new squircle steering wheel feels quite awkward. Stick with it and it quickly becomes natural. There’s still not a great deal of feel, but the Sportage rides well and smooths out rough roads even on optional 19in wheels. It’s not as sporting as a Ford Puma or as soft as a Citroen C5 Aircross, but the balance works.

Cornering? Let’s be real, this is a family SUV, so track-friendly handling here is about as useful as the ‘g’ in lasagne. That said, Mercedes protégé Doriane Pin drives one of these and if a practical Kia is good enough for a Spa 24H class winner, it’s good enough for you. Which is a round about way of saying body roll is kept to a minimum.

This generation of Sportage is also the first to get a bespoke Euro-spec chassis with a shorter wheelbase than the rest of the world, bringing with it better handling and improved manoeuvrability around town, for example. Kia tells us interior space is uncompromised, but it was hardly going to say otherwise.

Remind me of the available variants...

Your current entry point is the 1.6-litre petrol, outputting 147bhp and returning a 0-62mph time of 9.7 seconds. It’s paired with a six-speed manual gearbox, but can also be had with a seven-speed dual-clutch auto, which reduces the 0-62mph time to 9.4s. You’re looking at a claimed 40mpg in either variant.

The new and improved full hybrid powertrain is available in two- or four-wheel drive form. It pairs the same 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine with a six-speed auto gearbox, an electric motor and small (1.5kWh) battery. The result is a handy 235bhp (up from the previous version’s 212bhp) and 0-62mph in 7.9s, or 8.1s in the 4WD versions. Kia claims economy of up to 50.4mpg and 44.1mpg respectively.

The old plug-in hybrid married – you guessed it – a 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine to a 90bhp motor and 13.8kWh lithium-ion battery, for a combined 248bhp and around 43 miles of emissions-free running when on electric power alone. We’ll update this section once we've driven the new version.

Which have you driven?

Only the full hybrid to date. Acceleration is punchy, with the transition between electric and petrol power handled tidily, plus smooth gear changes and decent feel to the brakes. On the move it’s mostly reasonably quiet and refined – though if you really floor it then the engine can be a little noisy while it gets you up to speed.

It gets two modes, Eco or Sport. On start-up it defaults to Eco, with the paddleshifters allowing you to cycle between three levels of regeneration (or fully off), or you can set it to an auto function within the touchscreen. Chances are you’ll mostly leave it in this, with electric running prioritised as much as possible. 

Switch to Sport and the accelerator feels noticeably more responsive, with the paddles behind the steering wheel instead allowing you to manually shift gears, though it’ll still auto shift if it the revs spike or fall too much. The engine is also called upon far more frequently, with little electric-only running to be had.

Overall though, we're pretty impressed – it’s responsive and it’s worth noting that we peaked at 48mpg in Eco and 42mpg in Sport doing the exact same journey in the front-drive variant). See, driving modes do make a difference. And why not get you a car that can do both…

Anything else we should know?

Our pre-facelift experience of the entry, mild hybrid petrol revealed a car whose 48-volt architecture essentially acts as a more capable stop-start system. You’ll occasionally move away from a standstill on electric power, but there’s no meaningful all-electric range. It’s also far from a quick car, but on the move it’s reasonably quiet and refined, with smooth gear changes and decent feel to the brakes.

Oh, and we hate to end on a bad note, but the ADAS systems rank among the more infuriating we’ve tried, constantly bonging at us in various pitches for seemingly absolutely no reason at all. We know that this isn’t exclusive to Kia, but when there's often no message to accompany (and identify) the sound, it's painful.

Fortunately, the Sportage gets a couple of customisable shortcut buttons, including one very handily on the steering wheel, which you can set to take you straight to the settings on the touchscreen where you can turn them all off. Still not as useful as having a button to switch them straight off, but better than nothing at all.