Kia Stonic VS Jeep Renegade
Kia Stonic
Likes
- Practical interior
- Turbo engine a welcome change
- Still competitively priced even with increase
Dislikes
- Small touchscreen
- No adaptive cruise control
- Too sluggish from standstill
Jeep Renegade
Likes
- Tonka tough
- Lots of standard inclusions
- Looks the part
Dislikes
- Iffy entertainment software
- Naff interior
- Vague steering
Summary
Kia Stonic
Small SUVs have found plenty of favour in Australia and understandably so because they offer much in the way of urban-driving appeal.
And carmakers like Kia have near-perfected the art of fulfilling drivers' needs and wants and doing so with an end product that’s quite often also easy on the eyes.
But drivers – even drivers of small SUVs – like some poke in their engine. To that end, Kia has punched some turbocharged oomph into its Stonic line-up with the introduction of the 1.0-litre, three-cylinder turbo-petrol engine previously offered only in the top-spec GT-Line.
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Now there’s also more safety gear onboard than in previous versions, but – of course – prices have increased, as well.
Is the mid-spec Stonic Sport the best buy in the three-grade line-up?
Read on.
| Safety rating | |
|---|---|
| Engine Type | 1.0L turbo |
| Fuel Type | — |
| Fuel Efficiency | 6.7L/100km |
| Seating | 5 seats |
Jeep Renegade
Jeep's Renegade might be late to the mini-SUV party but it comes with a pretty impressive back catalogue to suggest that this is a SUV that can cash the cheques its name can write.
The top of the range Trailhawk can write even bigger cheques than the lower models, bringing with it a range of off-road tech toys to let you really get down and dirty.
| Safety rating | |
|---|---|
| Engine Type | 2.4L |
| Fuel Type | Premium Unleaded Petrol |
| Fuel Efficiency | 7.5L/100km |
| Seating | 5 seats |
Verdict
Kia Stonic6.9/10
All in all, the Stonic is a satisfactory daily driver, it’s just nowhere near ideal as a modern urban conveyance.
Sure, it’s reasonably priced in an increasingly expensive market, but it is very sluggish off the mark which is a solid negative against its overall rating. It also feels cheap inside and lacks contemporary driver-assist tech, such as adaptive cruise control.
Jeep Renegade6.4/10
Rugged, dependable and good off-road are the most obvious qualities of the Trailhawk. It stands out from the rest of the mini-SUVs by being able to do the S and the U with plenty of vigour.
It's just a shame that its on-road manners can't match that of its big brother, the Cherokee. Unless you're planning on proper off-roading, the Trailhawk might not be quite what you're looking for.
How do you think the Renegade Trailhawk matches up to its small SUV rivals? Tell us in the comments below.
Click here to see more 2016 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk pricing and spec info.
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Design
Kia Stonic
I spend the lion’s share of my time in large and upper large 4WDs, so spending quality time in something like this little hot hatchbac… er, small SUV, is a revelation and a lot of zippy fun. Like driving a go-kart without the fumes and the prangs.
The 2025 Kia Stonic Sport is 4140mm long (with a 2580mm wheelbase), 1760mm wide and 1520mm high. It has a listed kerb weight of 1227kg.
This is a slick-looking hatchbac… er, light SUV, and it looks suitably sporty.Â
Though ground clearance is unlisted, it stands well clear of the road surface, giving this hatchbac… er, compact SUV, more presence than it otherwise might have.
Jeep Renegade7/10
In what is absolutely not a coincidence, the Renegade immediately conjures up the Wrangler. Upright grille from the Willys Jeep (references abound here), round headlights, squared off wheel arches to mimic the Wrangler's guards, short overhangs and big rear view mirrors.
The 17-inch wheels look completely lost in the wheelarches which are even more cavernous owing to the Trailhawk's 50mm of extra ride height. The wheels are also a bit cheap looking but will probably survive the belting the car is intended to take.
Less rugged is the interior, despite a fairly self-conscious effort to make it look and feel chunky. The front seats are flat and unsupportive with the rears just as lacklustre making sure everyone is sliding around together. Luckily, front passengers get a dash-mounted grab handle.
It seems quite well put together, however, but with carpets and easily-marked plastics, you'll hope your passengers don't bring the mud in with them too often. And the "Since 1941" stamped into the steering wheel can go.
The dashboard is reasonably clear and has plenty of information to share via the screen between the dials but whoever thought marking the redline with a water splash graphic in bright orange should probably rethink their design decisions.
Storage is limited to two cupholders up front, door pockets in each door and nets on the front seat backs.
Practicality
Kia Stonic
The Stonic Sport’s interior is a practical space but it feels a bit dated and underdone in a car market increasingly packed with well-equipped, cheaper and more contemporary SUVs.
The most obvious factors working against the Sport are its the 8.0-inch touchscreen multimedia (too small), the absence of wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and wireless phone charging and multiple hard plastic surfaces.
Sure, the touchscreen is easy enough to operate, but it sometimes takes a few finger stabs to hit the sweet spot you’re after, and thankfully there are dials and buttons off-screen as alternatives for air con controls, etc.
There’s a satisfactory number of storage spaces in the front including two cupholders between the seats, a few little receptacles for your everyday carry gear, and bottle holders in each of the front doors.
The back seat is short on cupholders – there are none – but there are bottle holders in the doors, and the passengers back there get a USB-A port, a map pocket (in the back of the front passenger’s seat) and flip-down grab handles. There are no directional air vents.
Back-seat room is satisfactory for an adult without being spacious, but fine for kids. What do you expect in a small SUV?
In terms of packability, the cargo area (with the rear seat up and in use) yields a listed 352 litres of space. The rear seats are in a 60/40 split fold configuration and with them folded down there is a listed 1155 litres of useable room.
The rear cargo area has bag hooks, a storage space in the left-hand inner wall, and tie-down points at each corner of the floor.
A steel space-saver spare wheel is under the cargo area floor.
Price and features
Kia Stonic
The Kia Stonic is available in three grades – the S ($25,460), our test vehicle, the mid-spec Sport ($28,590) and the GT-Line ($31,780), all prices excluding on-road costs. All have five seats.
Standard features include an 8.0-inch touchscreen multimedia system (with wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto), satellite navigation, digital radio, two USB charging ports, single-zone climate control, six-way manual driver’s seat adjustment, a premium shift knob, premium steering wheel, and Tricot cloth trim seats.
It also has 17-inch alloy wheels, push-button start and rear privacy glass.
Standard paint is 'Clear White', but premium options including 'Sparkling Silver', 'Astro Grey', 'Aurora Black Pearl', 'Signal Red', 'Sporty Blue', 'Honeybee' and 'Snow White Pearl' cost $520.
Jeep Renegade6/10
The Renegade range starts at $28,000 for the 1.6-litre Renegade Sport manual front-wheel drive, climbing between $2000 and $3000 through the Sport Auto, Longitude Auto, Limited Auto with a final jump of $4000 to the 2.4-litre auto-only Trailhawk.
Standard is a nine-speaker stereo with Bluetooth and USB, 17-inch alloys, dual-zone climate control, reversing camera, rear parking sensors, keyless entry and start, cruise control, electric front seats with heating, satellite navigation, automatic bi-xenon headlights, auto wipers, leather trim, roof rails, front and middle bash plates, full size spare, heated leather steering wheel, privacy glass, trailer sway control and tyre pressure monitoring.Â
The lairy Omaha orange is $500, part of an eleven colour palette with only two no-cost paint options (black and white).
You can add lane departure warning, auto-parking and a black painted roof for $500 each, a removable and retractable roof called My Sky Roof for $2200 or a more conventional electric sunroof for $1900.
The Beats-branded nine-speaker stereo is run via Fiat-Chryser's UConnect system, accessible through the 6.5-inch touchscreen. While it improves with every attempt, it's still quite clunky and when the sat-nav is added, becomes a bit of a mess.
Thankfully, not every function has been crammed into the touchscreen interface, so you'll spend more time with your hands on the wheel rather than working out which bit of the screen has the climate control.
Under the bonnet
Kia Stonic
The 2025 Kia Sonic Sport has a 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbo-petrol engine – producing 74kW at 4500-6000rpm and 172Nm at 1500-4000rpm – and that’s paired with a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission.Â
This pairing is a mostly punchy one, although definite lagginess is evident from a standing start often enough that it’s a disconcerting characteristic rather than a mildly annoying one.
This turbocharged engine used to only be offered in the top-spec GT-Line, so it’s a welcome addition to the other grades.
Jeep Renegade6/10
The Trailhawk is powered by Fiat's 2.4-litre four naturally-aspirated four-cylinder producing 129 kW and 230 Nm. Jeep reckons you'll get 7.5L/100km on the combined cycle. Our mostly city driving with a longish motorway run produced an 11.0L/100km average over a week.
The transmission is a nine-speed ZF automatic driving all four wheels.
The Trailhawk also has Jeep's five mode Selec-Terrain system which should cover pretty much every eventuality – Auto, Sport, Mud, Sand and, just for the Trailhawk, Rock. The Trailhawk is rated to tow 400kg unbraked and 907kg braked.
Efficiency
Kia Stonic
Kia's official fuel consumption figure for the Stonic Sport is 5.4L/100km, on a combined (urban/extra-urban) cycle. And on this test I recorded 8.2L/100km.
The Stonic Sport has an 45-litre fuel tank so, going by my on-test fuel figure, you could reasonably expect a driving range of about 548km from a full tank.Â
Fuel requirement is 91 RON 'standard' unleaded.
Driving
Kia Stonic
The Stonic Sport is a handy urban conveyance, but it is far from perfect.
It’s a small, light vehicle so it’s nimble for navigating through car-packed streets and convenient for tricky parking manoeuvres.
Steering is well weighted and precise.
And the turbocharged petrol engine is a welcome addition to the Stonic package, introducing a handy amount of power and torque which is sensibly harnessed and delivered – most of the time anyway – via the mostly clever transmission.
However, in stop-start, inner-city traffic or even a busy suburban area, the Stonic Sport struggles to get off the mark from a standstill, so much so that this one characteristic threatens to spoil the rest of the driving experience.Â
Once the Sport is out on the open road, it’s a pleasant cruiser as this compact SUV simply rolls along.
Ride is firm – 17-inch wheels and low-profile tyres are the culprits here – and handling is impressive.
In terms of refinement the Stonic is mostly, um, fine but there is some tyre noise, especially over rougher roads out of the city, but it’s not terrible.
Every Stonic has three drive modes – 'Normal', 'Sport' and 'Eco' – each of which tweaks throttle response, engine output and transmission settings to best suit the driver and conditions.Â
The Stonic is generally a reasonable daily driver, but the absence of adaptive cruise control is a let-down when it comes to highway running.
Not that you’ll be buying a Stonic with the aim of skull-dragging a 3500kg caravan along the highway, but it’s handy to know this Kia SUV’s towing capacities are 450kg (unbraked trailer) and 900kg (braked).
Jeep Renegade6/10
The Trailhawk name suggest that things are going to get muddy – compared to the rest of the range, the range-topper rides 50mm higher and has exposed, easy-to-reach tow hooks in the fairly unlikely event you get stuck. It also has a 20:1 low-range crawl ratio and Active Drive 4x4 which means it can switch between front and all-wheel drive. It'll also wade through almost half a metre of water. It's a genuine mud-plugging proposition and will take on some much bigger machinery out in the bush.
On the road, where we spent all our time in the Renegade, it's not what you'd call particularly inspiring. There's a number of sources of noise that contribute to a less than quiet cabin and having to constantly correct your course at freeway speeds adds to the tiring nature of the Renegade.
It's much better at lower speeds, pottering around but then again, its nine-speed transmission needs a lot more work on the shift mapping because it seems to forget which gear it needs to be in when you sink the right foot. If you don't need the Trailhawk's extra off-road goodies, consider the 1.4 litre Limited or Longitude.
Safety
Kia Stonic
The Kia Stonic has the maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating as a result of testing in 2017, but that rating is set to expire in 2025.
Standard safety features include six airbags (dual front, front side and full-length curtain), as well as a suite of driver-assist tech, including AEB (with forward collision warning, car, pedestrian and cyclist detection), lane-keep assist, front and rear parking sensors and blind-spot collision avoidance. But it doesn’t have adaptive cruise control which is disappointing in this day and age.
Jeep Renegade7/10
Seven airbags (including driver's knee bag), traction and stability controls, roll mitigation, blind spot monitoring, ABS and brake assist.
The Renegade does not yet have an ANCAP star rating although it scored five EuroNCAP stars in 2014.
Ownership
Kia Stonic
Kia’s seven-year/unlimited kilometre warranty applies to the Stonic and you have access to roadside assistance for up to eight years as long as you always get it serviced at an authorised Kia garage.
Servicing intervals are set at every 12 months or 10,000km, whichever comes soonest.
Service costs start at $290 (12 months/10,000km), peak at $727 (48 months/40,000km) and finish at $578 (84 months/70,000km) and the total over seven years is $3367; an average of $481 per workshop visit (correct at time of writing). That’s rather pricey for something in the small SUV market.