Kia’s gone extra mile with classy ride
Kia’s gone an extra mile with suspension revisions, and while the basic independent front and rear layout is carried over, stiffer bushes, tweaked shocks, reworked sub-frame mountings, an updated rear cross member and a new steering damper all work to make the new Sportage handle and ride better than the outgoing model. It seems to have worked too.
I only drove one variant at the launch – a 2-litre turbodiesel allwheel-drive SX – but it cruised in a very upper class way, unperturbed by corrugations and scarred sections of the Cape’s N2.
Impressive, especially considering this model (and the top GTLine) rides on the lowest possible profile 19-inch rubber. Base Ignites are fitted with 16-inch alloys and the EX rolls on 17s. Full-size spares are also included in all models.
My test car’s CRDi engine was carried over from the previous Sportage but it has undergone some fine tuning to make it lighter, quieter and smoother.
Power is set at 130kW but its the hefty 400Nm torque figure that made easy work of uphill overtakes and high-speed, high-gear cruising at low revs.
It’ll likely be the most popular of the four engine choices, albeit in the cheaper front-wheel-drive EX derivative.
Other motor options include a 114kW/192Nm naturally-aspirated 2.0 petrol in the six-speed manual Ignite, a 135kW/237Nm naturally-aspirated 2.4-litre petrol (a new addition for the Sportage range) in combination with a sixspeed autobox in the AWD SX, and a 130kW/265Nm 1.6 turbopetrol (also new to Sportage) which is common to the Kia Koup but downtuned for this application. This engine comes in the GT-Line only, and drives all four wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic. All Sportage models come with five-year/ unlimited mileage warranties and five-year/90 000km service plans.
PRICES 2.0 Ignite 2.0 CRDi EX 2.4 GDI SX AWD 2.0 CRDi SX AWD 1.6 T-GDI GT-Line AWD
R369 995 R487 995 R557 995 R567 995 R599 995