ON FRONT PAG E N O R T H E AST V I C TO R I A , A L P S A N D H I G H CO U N T RY
AUGUST 5 - 11, 2016
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KIA SPORTAGE: Styling of the new generation brings its bang up to date.
Sporty Kia Sportage By EWAN KENNEDY It has the same height as before, but longer front overhangs and shorter rear overhangs aid in the sleeker look. The latter changes are more about style than off-road use, which is probably slightly compromised. Given that very few buy SUVs to go off road that’s not likely to be an issue. Sportage is sold in three trim levels: Si, SLi and Platinum GT-Line, and with a choice of petrol and diesel engines. Prices starts at a pretty reasonable $28,990 for the 2.0-litre petrol Sportage Si and tops out at $45,990 for the Platinum turbo-diesel.
Our review was of the Sportage Platinum GT-Line in an excellent shade of red. The Sportage’s bold new style was chiefly done in Kia’s European design studio in Frankfurt, there was also input from the company’s Korean and Californian design studios as Kia is very much a global player these days. Sportage has Kia’s hallmark ‘tiger-nose’ grille and it works well with the tall bonnet to give it a bold look. The roof slopes neatly towards the rear, but not to the extent of spoiling rear headroom. The headlamps sweep well back along the outer edges of the bonnet. Quad ‘ice-cube’ LED foglights are
becoming an interesting feature of the latest Kia models and work nicely with the GT-Line. The red paint of our road test Sportage was nicely set off by the black of the lower edges of the bumpers, the sills and the protection strips in the inner edges of the wheelarches. The Sportage Si has a 3.5-inch mono display in the centre of the dashboard. The SLi and Platinum have a 4.2-inch colour TFT supervision cluster. All models get a 7-inch touchscreen infotainment screen featuring reversing camera display with dynamic parking lines, while satellite navigation is standard for SLi and Platinum. Continued page 2
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AN all-new Kia Sportage arrived in Australia at the start of 2016. More stylish than previous Sportages, that tended to lean in the direction of SUV rather than trendy wagon, it’s already selling well. And sales are likely to leap now that Kia has secured number one spot in the JD Power Initial Quality Study in the USA. Sportage was ranked top vehicle in the small SUV segment. New Sportage has a longer wheelbase than the outgoing model and is 40 mm longer overall (at 4480 mm), both changes are there to give better interior space, more about that in the Driving section of this review.
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