Kia Sportage GT-Line S 2.0 CRDi 48V
Kia Sportage joins the HJ fleet
We add a very expensive mild hybrid Kia Sportage to the Our Cars fleet.
Date: 4 January 2019 | Current mileage: 253 | Claimed economy: 48.7mpg | Actual economy: 37.2mpg
We like the Kia Sportage. A lot. It’s one of just a handful of cars that we give five stars to and it’s a model that we frequently recommend to buyer, through Ask Honest John and other areas of the site where we give advice. With that in mind, it seemed fitting that we should test the latest - freshly re-vamped - iteration over a longer period.
So, what is it about the Sportage that we like? In a increasingly crowded field, the Sportage really stands out, mainly because it gets the basics spot-on. It’s comfortable for all on board - including those in the back - with good enough leg and knee room to make longer trips pain-free for adults. The boot is big, the seats fold easily, ride quality is good and it’s very refined on the motorway. That all sounds simple and fairly mundane, but many other crossovers don’t get those basics right. And that means that no matter what other bells and whistles are added - a reversing camera here or an electric tailgate there - if it doesn’t have those foundations in place, it’s never going to be any better than average. And to top it all off, as with all Kias, it has that seven-year/100,000-mile warranty that remains industry-leading.
It’s no surprise then that Kia shifts more Sportages than it does any other models, including Picanto and Ceed, which are hardly slow sellers in their own right.
The current generation - with its smoother looks and distinctive grille - has been around since 2016. Earlier this year it was treated to a mild facelift, which brought in new foglight housings are gloss black and chrome trim within the redesigned front bumper and new full-LED headlights feature four-point daytime running LEDs. Inside, there’s a new steering wheel and instrument cluster, and the ventilation controls have been redesigned. ‘Lower spec’ (I use that term loosely as all Sportages are impressively specced) now get a 7-inch display, while more expensive ones have a 8-inch system.
Dan's Sportage isn't short of kit. But what else do you expect for more than £35,000?
I’ve gone for one of those more expensive ones, the range-topping GT-Line S 2.0 CRDi. It is absolutely packed with kit, some of it you’ll use every day and some of it is just nice to have. As well as the bits and pieces that have in recent years moved from expensive option to standard-fit (DAB Radio and LED running lights for instance), there’s all kinds of treats from a heated steering wheel and heated/vented in the front and heated seats in the back to cameras that give a 360 degree view around the vehicle. In fact, there’s very little I can think of that could be fitted. Wireless mobile phone charging? Check. Electric tailgate. Check. High beam assist. Check. Electric seats, radar cruise control and Apple Carplay/Andriod Auto: check, check and check.
Specifications aside, one of the key aspects of this model over standard Sportage versions is the addition of a mild hybrid system. Whether that’s of any practical benefit in normal day-to-day driving we’ll discover over the coming months. This isn’t a plug-in system and works by recovering energy that would otherwise be lost through braking. We’ll also be keeping a keen eye not only the fuel that we’re achieving, but also what owners are reporting through Real MPG - which remains the most comprehensive database of reader-submitted fuel economy figures with now more than 150,000 readings.
So, let's talk prices. You should take a seat before we do. Ready?
OK, it’s £35,140. I know, I know, that’s an awful lot of money for any crossover, even a top-spec one like this. But that is the list price. Our own Cars For Sale section is seeing discounts on this particular version of between ten and 15 per cent. Even at the lower end of the scale, that brings it a lot closer to £30,000 and with a bit more research and haggling, that price should drop further. And at £28-29,000, this car is a much more attractive value proposition and much more justifiable. Opt for a PCP - as many of us are doing these days - and the figures are slightly more palatable. You’ll need an £8250 deposit (Kia will contribute £750), but you can have this model over 36 months on a 2.9 per cent interest rate for little over £370 per month. As with all PCPs, mileage is limited - this time at 10,000 per year.
Checking out a cheaper model
Andrew compares Dan's Sportage to a much cheaper model.
Date: 18 January 2019 | Current mileage: 788 | Claimed economy: 48.7mpg | Actual economy: 39.1mpg
Editorial Director Dan’s Kia Sportage is a really lovely crossover. It’s packed with tech, the innovative mild hybrid powertrain is easy to like, and it’s hard to think of a rival that acts as a better all-rounder.
But it’s also £35,140. And that’s a lot of money for a Kia Sportage. Fortunately, we recently had the much cheaper 1.6 GDi petrol in for review, which gave us the perfect opportunity to compare the cars sitting at the bottom and top of the Sportage range.
Without a turbocharger or the help of an electric motor, the 136PS 1.6-litre petrol engine takes a very long time to accelerate up to speed. To get it moving, you have to cling onto revs, working it towards 6000rpm on the rev dial before it starts to hint at any kind of performance.
That won’t bother many buyers - this isn’t a car you buy for pace - but having to rag it just to keep up with traffic when joining a motorway gets tiring. It also means you’d be lucky to get near the official 41.5mpg figure - our readers report around 35.0mpg on average.
The Kia Sportage GT-Line S looks the business - but you'll pay for it.
If you’re looking for a petrol, we reckon most buyers would be better catered for with the 176PS T-GDi engine. Thanks to its turbocharger, this feels much sprightlier than the entry-level engine, with a 0-62mph time of 9.2 seconds (compared to 11.5 for the GDi).
Engines aside, what do you get for your money spec-wise in the entry-level Sportage ‘1’ compared to our top-spec GT-Line S? Well, the former comes with 16-inch alloy wheels, air conditioning, a seven-inch colour touchscreen audio display with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, as well as cruise control and a reversing camera. Not a bad for a base-spec car.
The GT-Line S, meanwhile, comes with everything. There’s 19-inch alloys, black leather, a panoramic sunroof (great for brightening up the interior), a 360-degree around view monitor, wireless phone charge, eight-inch navigation system, a premium audio system… the list goes on.
Like with the engines, the sweet spot in the Sportage range is probably somewhere between the two. The Sportage ‘4’ features many of the features of the top-spec GT-Line S, but does without features like the 360-degree camera system and wireless phone charger. It’s also a fair bit cheaper, starting at £27,260. Combine the ‘4’ trim level with the T-GDi petrol engine, and we reckon you’d have a very nice Sportage.
AB
One million owners can’t be wrong - can they?
Kia sells its one millionth car in the UK - and a quarter of them have been Sportages.
Date: 1 February 2019 | Current mileage: 1987 | Claimed economy: 48.7mpg | Actual economy: 39.1mpg
It couldn't have escaped your attention over the past decade or so that there seems to be more Kias on the road than ever before. The brand's rise from slightly oddball car manufacturer to mainstay of the UK car market has been nothing short of meteoric and matched only by its stablemate Hyundai. Just look at what the firm was offering less than 20 years ago compared to its current line-up. Top pub quiz points to anyone that can picture a Shuma II, Mentor or Clarus.
The big change came in the in the mid-2000s for Kia. It went from focussing on price to focussing on value. That may sound like splitting hairs, but it’s an important distinction. Kias used to be cheap - incredibly cheap. Back in 2001/2002 Shuma II and Mentor both came in at less than £9000. At the time a Vectra - which was a similar size - was an additional £5000 for the same spec.
The quality wasn’t there. It felt cheap and most people were happy to pay extra for the Vauxhall or get a nearly-new one at not that much of a premium. But the firm switched to focusing on value - which is more than just list price - got Peter Schreyer (the car designer who had previously worked on the Audi TT), built a factory in Europe and - especially eye-catching for buyers - adopted a seven-year 100,000-mile warranty.
And it worked. Although list prices increased and - over the course of a decade or so - crept ever closer to Fords and Volkswagens, buyers were won over by the overall value package of quality, safety, specification, durability and design. Starting with models like Ceed and Picanto and latterly Sportage, Kia’s modern range of cars not only caught up to their well-established competitors, but in some cases beat them. It’s why Sportage is one of just a handful of cars that we’ve awarded five stars. It’s one of our favourite crossovers.
Remember the Kia Pride? Dan's disappointed his Sportage doesn't have whitewall tyres.
The upshot to that focus on value has meant that sales have boomed in the UK and the firm has just cracked the 1m sales mark. Fittingly the one millionth car was a rather familiar-looking one. Dr Fergus Duncan - a Kia customer from Scotland - took delivery of a blue Sportage GT-Line model (visually identical to mine) delivered by Kia dealer Flear and Thompson of Dunfermline marking the 1 million car mark.
Almost a quarter of those sales have been Sportages (which has been sold since 1995), with Picanto accounting for a almost 200,000 since 2004 and Ceed racking up 138,000 since its introduction in 2007. Paul Philpott, President and Chief Executive at Kia in the UK said of the milestone: “This is remarkable and all of us at Kia are extremely proud to have reached this momentous moment inside three decades. “I don’t know just when we will reach the 2 million mark, but we are all looking forward to the journey to that point and it will be an exciting ride that I am sure will see the nature of the motoring world change quite considerably,” he added.
In fact, looking at stats from our very own How Many Exist?, the story of Kia is an interesting one. How Many Exist is a neat little tool that will show you how many cars of a certain make or model are still on the road. Of that 1m that Kia has sold in the UK, just 184,000 are from 2000-2010, with a noticeable jump from 2008 onwards. There are 553,000 Kias still on the road that were registered after 2010 - more than half of all sold. To give you some idea of how weighted toward the 2010s those figures are, of the late 1990s/early 2000s Kias mentioned earlier, there are just 253 Shuma IIs left, 214 Mentors and just 39 Claruses.
And what of the Pride, the car that kicked it all off for Kia in the UK almost 30 years ago? Well it’s certainly heading towards ‘unconventional classic’ status and with 399 still on the road, it’s also one of the more common early Kias - though in this company, that is very much a relative term.
Cable and wireless
With wireless phone charging and Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, the Kia Sportage is packed with the latest technology. But what's coming next?
Date: 15 March 2019 | Current mileage: 2367 | Claimed economy: 48.7mpg | Actual economy: 39.1mpg
Around a decade or so ago, car manufacturers were in a real pickle with technology: It was moving faster than their seven-year product cycles could cope with. The Apple iPhone - launched in 2007 - changed everything. Almost overnight cars needed to be ‘connected’ in order to play music and connect for phone calls. Remember, because of those long product cycles, base-spec Audi A3s still came with a cassette player in 2007 and it wasn’t until 2011 that the final car to be offered with a cassette player was discontinued: the Lexus SC430, with its huge built-in entertainment system, held out to the bitter end. Connecting up your phone usually meant plugging into a aux-in port - assuming one was available.
In the face of fast-changing consumer technology, cars and car manufacturers suddenly looked outdated and out-of-touch. On-board tech - even on brand new cars - often felt like something from another age and lacked the sophistication of the small black oblong, which - whether from Apple or another manufacturer - was in an ever increasing number of pockets by the early 2010s.
That pace of change initially caught manufacturers off-guard and they struggled to make-up lost ground and catch up to consumer tech, let alone have a similar look, feel and functionality.
Since then, manufacturers have learnt to become more flexible in order to keep on top of changing trends and introduce new innovations more quickly. The falling cost of Bluetooth connectivity has helped - it’s so cheap now, that even base-model small hatches have it. It means that there’s not only a universal way of connecting a car to a phone, but innovations can be quickly and efficiently integrated.
Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are standard on even the entry-level Sportage.
The latest generation of Kia Sportage is a great example of how consumer tech and cars are merging into one and the same thing. It comes with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which makes for a simple connection between the car and the phone and a much deeper integration than a standard Bluetooth connection.
But it’s the inclusion of QI wireless charging demonstrates that manufacturers have learnt their lesson with fast-changing tech. Wireless charging is still only available on a small range of handsets, but is a built-in feature on the Sportage. It’s a relatively simple feature, but one that I’ve come to rely on, falling into a routine of putting my phone onto charge both in the mornings and on the way home from work. That top-up means it's always fully charged and, as we have ever increasing amounts of devices that connect to our phones which drain the battery, this is a genuinely useful addition. Charging is quick too, charging a phone from near-empty to fully charged within a couple of hours (and while connected to the car, playing music) and frees up the USB ports for others to charge their devices, too. And, as if to highlight that symbiotic relationship between phone and car - if you leave the phone on charge and leave the car, it will remind you that you have left the phone behind.
So, where does the combination of phone and car take us next? One bet is being able to unlock/start your car using your phone. This kind of technology - using NFC (Near Field Communication) - is already being used door locks on houses and to allow temporary access to lockers etc. With car sharing likely to become more mainstream in future, this kind of technology will need to be built-in. It comes with numerous benefits- easy starting by placing the phone onto the wireless charger, being able to create temporary ‘keys’ if it’s picked up for servicing and automatically tailoring settings - such as entertainment and sat nav preferences - for different drivers.
My prediction is that this kind of tech isn’t far off and we’ll probably see it on the next generation of Sportage - if not before. This will come as a concern to some people: keyless entry - where you can keep the key in your bag/pocket but still unlock the car - is offered on Sportage and works well. But it has been exploited in recent years by thieves who have worked out how to clone the signal from the keys to gain entry and steal cars from people’s drives.
As ever with new tech, new benefits can create unforeseen problems, or in the case of keyless entry, flaws to exploit. If and when ‘digital keys’ are introduced, we’ll be keeping a keen eye on whether they’re creating more problems than they solve.
