Kia Sportage 2007 review

Car production is finally acknowledging what has been obvious for some time, very few offroaders actually head offroad.

“We are seeing a shift in the market (towards the two-wheel drive softroader configuration),” Kia Australia’s director of sales and marketing, Bill Gillespie, says.

“They’re very popular in the United States, and you’ll see more here in the future.”

Kia has just added to the offerings here with the launch of a 2WD variant of the Sportage that – with the accompany new diesel version – flanks the the V6 petrol Sportage that has been on the market here since 2005

At $24,990 for the base model, the 2WD Sportage matches the price of the similar Hyundai City Tucson, which is no surprise since they are sisters under the skin, but will compete well on price with 2WD versions of the Toyota Kluger and Hyundai Santa Fe, which are up to $10,000 more.

That entry price puts you in the manual LX, with a $2000 premium for the auto. At that level you get single CD audio that can play MP3 discs, airconditioning, cloth trim with leather on the steering wheel and shifter, power windows and mirrors, 16” alloy wheels with full-size spare, rear cargo cover, cruise control, twin front airbags and anti-skid brakes. For another $1600 on the auto there is an option pack with electronic stability program (ESP) and side and curtain airbags.

The appearance of the Sportage is largely unchanged, except that some of the V6 and diesel paint choices offer colour-matched bumpers and side sills, and there has been a minor brush-up in the cabins.

Despite being classed as a compact, the SUV offers plenty of room except for longer-legged rear seat passengers. Cargo space is fine for a couple of large suitcases even without any of the seats being folded, but with all except the driver’s down you can increase the capacity from 667 litres to a hungry 1886. There’s the extra utility of the passenger seat having a hard `table’ back when you fold it, so there’s no worry about a long object piercing the upholstery.

The Sportage hasn’t been crash-tested here, but Kia expects it to achieve the same five-star rating it was awarded in American tests, although those were down on a model with standard side curtain airbags.

On the road

There’s no denying the 2WD Sportage will be happiest around the city or in calm highway cruising.

Its 2.0-litre engine, borrowed from the small Cerato and 2WD Tucson, develops 104kW of power at 6000rpm and 184Nm of torque at a fairly high 4500prm. Kia says this gives it a top speed of 179km/h and gets it to 100km/h in 10.4 seconds with the manual version, but it actually felt a bit more than that, while the auto version seemed slower again.

It was content to trundle around town and cruise along with the highway flow, but overtaking and a run through the hills had it grumbling even in the lower gears at times.

The lack of any meaningful torque at the lower end of the rev range meant you had to keep the engine stirred up to get through the chore of steep slopes.

And it didn’t take too much of that before we lost any chance of approaching Kia’s fuel economy figure of 8.2L/100km, although this looked like being achievable while we were in town and on the highway.

The compliant suspension was excellent over rougher roads and even smoothed over some very threatening potholes, but the system allowed the Sportage to wallow around corners, where the front-wheel drive also threw up considerable understeer, especially during acceleration out of the curve.

It didn’t help that the steering felt spongy, although some of the response could well have been muffled by the tread of the Hankook tyres.

The Australian market for anything that remotely resembles an SUV is booming, with sales up 10.9 per cent on last year.

And the compact segment of that class is almost double that with a 18.6 per cent increase and the likelihood of more than 90,000 sales by the end of the year.

The current V6 Sportage has been notching up sales of about 1000 a year since it arrived in 2005, and while Kia is being conservative about sales forecasts for the two new Sportages, it believes the 2WD should go out the door at the rate of about 150 per month or 1800 next year in total.