Seven-up for spacious Kia (From Advertiser Series)

Seven-up for spacious Kia

4:08pm Thursday 17th December 2009

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The rise of Kia shouldn’t come as any great surprise, for its business model – as the experts on Dragons’ Den might put it – is simple but very effective.

Kia’s aim is to create good-looking cars which are functional, reliable and cheap to run. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sportage, tested here, covers all those four bases with aplomb.

As if to hammer home the point, Kia is now offering seven-year, 100,000 mile warranties. Heck... talk about gilding the lily. Some of us still find five-year warranties pretty impressive.

In fact, only a very small minority will keep a car long enough to benefit. Even fewer will have their car serviced at a main dealer to keep their warranty alive, but seven years is a great talking point – buy a Kia and don’t worry about things going wrong until the end of 2016. Amazing.

No wonder Kia’s bid for world domination is on course.

This company was once a small fish in a very large pond. Not any more. It is rapidly becoming one of the big boys with the likes of Ford, Vauxhall, Renault and co in its sights.

Sportage is at the heart of the Kia plan. It has long been established as a top-ten seller in its sports utility vehicle (SUV) class.

Now Kia has made a number of small but important changes designed to broaden its appeal. The addition of front-wheel drive models (they were all 4x4s until recently) has made it cheaper and more attractive to townies who want an SUV for its height and image rather than its ability to navigate fields and rivers.

Steering has been made more responsive and the body stiffened to make it more car-like.

The cabin, perhaps a little austere in the past, is still simple and easy to live with, but it has more of a premium feel to it.

Although the controls are simple, they do have one particularly interesting feature; there are USB and AUX ports, which make this one of the most techie-friendly cars on the road.

It’s also one of the roomiest cars in its class, with legroom in both front and back especially good.

With the rear seats folded, the luggage area is 1,480mm long and holds 1,887 litres, better than many big estates. The tailgate glass can be opened independently of the tailgate, and there are tons of storage ‘zones’, as Kia calls them.

l Kia expects sales to be split two-thirds to one-third in favour of 4x4 compared to two-wheel-drive. XS will be the biggest seller (49 per cent), compared to XE (43 per cent) and Titan (the flagship model with eight per cent).

Kia Sportage 2.0 CRDi XS:- PRICE: £16,890. Part of a range costing from £14,837.

ENGINE: A 2.0 litre unit generating 139bhp via all four wheels.

PERFORMANCE: Top speed 108mph, 0-to-60mph in 11.3 seconds.

EMISSIONS: 194g/km.

COSTS: Average 34.4mpg.

INSURANCE: Group 10.

WARRANTY: Seven years, 100,000 miles. Plus a ten-year anti-perforation warranty and seven-year paint guarantee.

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