ROAD TEST: 2020 KIA TELLURIDE KIA’S NEW BIG BOY MAKES THE SUV COMPETITION WEEP
It’s never good news for the competition when Kia launches a new SUV. And for those manufacturers in the three-row crossover game, the 2020 Kia Telluride is really bad news. Right out of the box, Kia’s big boy leaps to the head of the class, showing intelligent design, premium build quality, fine driveability and killer value.
All Telluride models run with a 291-horsepower, 3.8-litre V6 with 262 pound-feet of torque, hooked to an eight-speed automatic transmission. It starts at $44,995 for the all-wheel-drive eight-seat EX, but here we are testing the next-up SX AWD at $49,995. And for this, Kia is slapping us silly with content.
Even the base EX slaps us silly with content: LED headlights, 10.25-inch touchscreen with navigation, comprehensive safety suite (adaptive cruise with stop and go, blind-spot warning and assist, rear cross-traffic alert and assist, lane-flow assist, driver-attention alert, rear parking sensors, rear-seat reminder system, forward-collision mitigation, high-beam assist, rear parking sensors), sunroof, UVO telematics, wireless cellphone charger, proximity key, power liftgate, heated steering wheel … well, you get the idea. Stepping up to the SX adds leather, ventilated front seats, Harman Kardon audio, 360-degree camera, dual sunroof, 20-inch alloys, more exterior chrome bling, blindview monitor … and the list goes on. Above this sits the more luxuriously equipped seven-seat SX Limited at $52,995, to which you can add Nappa leather ($1,000) for the full Mercedes-benz taunting experience.
If that isn’t enough to make the competition weep, all this content comes wrapped in a surprisingly spacious cabin showing build quality that appears snagged from a class above.
Your derrière will find the front seats to be very comfy and all controls work with an expensive feel. A bonus here are the user-friendly ergonomics — a hallmark of all Hyundai, Kia and Genesis products. Yes, we do get a big touchscreen, but also a plethora of buttons and knobs for easy operation of most functions. Want to adjust the seat temperature? There’s a glove-friendly toggle on the console for both heating and cooling. Want to tune a radio station without heading for the ditch? Oooh, look. A rotary knob. Genius.
A rotary selector aft of the shift lever gives access to various drive modes — Comfort, Sport, Eco and Smart — with the latter two sending 100 per cent of torque to the front wheels for improved fuel economy. There’s also a Terrain setting with drive parameters for Snow, Mud or Sand.
Unlike with many three-row crossovers, the wayback seats in the Telluride are more than just a penalty box. Access is relatively easy, and once back there, there’s sufficient leg and head room for average-size adults.
Cargo room behind the third row is generous, and with that row folded there’s a ton of space behind the second row. And the big Kia can tow up to 5,000 pounds.
On the road, the Telluride is a smooth operator, proving to be uncannily quiet on the highway.
The suspension has been tuned to soak up most road irregularities while maintaining good body control. The naturally aspirated V6 engine might lack the punch of some of its turbocharged competitors, but again, it works smoothly with the eight-speed auto, and delivers all the power you’ll need.
The adaptive cruise control is well calibrated, functioning accurately and without overly aggressive brake or throttle applications, and when working with the steering assist function, the Telluride proves pretty adept at the semi-autonomous thing. It tracks straight and true — no ping-ponging between lane markings — and on one stretch of straight highway it ran for two minutes and 15 seconds before asking me to touch the steering wheel. Believe me, that is an eternity.
Introduce a few bends and more traffic and the interval drops, but still I was getting up to a minute of hands-free highway motoring. OK, it’s a party trick and hardly relaxing, but I have yet to drive a premium German product that behaves itself this well.
On a winding back road the lane-keep assist function can be overly intrusive, which gets annoying. Turn it off with the dash-mounted button and all is good. Again, no deep diving into menu systems to find this stuff.
A cool SX feature is the blindspot monitor that shoots a live video stream of the vehicle’s blind spot (left or right) within the gauge cluster when the turn signal is activated.
It’s hard to find fault with the 2020 Telluride. Kia has sweated the details, dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” in bringing to market a three-row crossover that, quite frankly, raises the bar so high with regards to luxury, quality, functionality, drivability and value-for-dollar that all other players in this hotly contested segment suddenly become also-rans. Actually, the Telluride does have one serious competitor: the 2020 Hyundai Palisade. Essentially the same vehicle with a different set of clothes.