Kia’s rival to the latest Nissan Qashqai gets striking looks, huge infotainment screens, more space and will be available with a range of engines that include mild and plug-in hybrids.
The fifth-generation Kia Sportage will go on sale in January 2022 and is likely to start from £25,000 for a basic petrol model with a manual gearbox – that’s about £1500 more than an entry-level Nissan Qashqai, although Kia’s seven-year warranty gives you an extra two years cover next to the Nissan. If you’re considering the Kia, you’ll also be looking at cars like the Volkswagen Tiguan, Skoda Karoq, Ford Kuga, Hyundai Tucson, Honda HR-V… and many more.
Read Kia’s press bumf and you’ll learn that the new Sportage’s styling is born from five pillars – Joy for Reason, Power to Progress, Technology for Life, Tension for Serenity and Bold for Nature. We’ll call it striking.
There’s a Judge-Dredd flavour to the Kia’s front end, which is all grille bookended by slim, boomerang-shaped headlights. Around the sides, you get a distinctive stepped C-Pillar that’s highlighted by the chrome trim on the GT Line model in these pictures.
Good looking? We’re not sure, however, the old Sportage’s amphibian-esque face – with headlights that sat above its grille – was controversial when it launched, but seems to have aged well. We’d hazard a guess same will likely be true of the new car.
GT Line was the favoured specification of the old model and it’s likely to be popular with this new car, too. It gets sportier front and rear bumpers, 18-inch wheels and a contrasting black roof as demonstrated by the car you see here. The paint? It’s the launch colour – called Green Experience?
Away from the GT Line, Basic ‘2’ versions get 17-inch wheels, while sportiest-of-all GT Line S cars get 19s. There are six colours to choose from across the range.
Jump inside the New Kia Sportage blindfolded and when you take the blindfold off, you could be fooled into thinking you’ve got into an Audi. The first thing you notice is the pair of massive 12.3-inch infotainment screens but closer examination reveals metallic trims and large metal door handles that have a distinctly German feel.
Most of the plastics in the front of the car are soft to the touch, it’s only when you have a root around below eye level that you’ll find harder stuff. The GT Line model we had a poke around had shiny plastic trims on the centre console, leather seats, padded armrests and a suede-like finish on the insides of the doors.
The infotainment screens keep this high-quality feel alive. They’re colourful and clear and spark into life with a burst of slick animations. The sat-nav calculates routes quickly and the screen is very responsive to pinch and swipe gestures.
The screen can also show info on the car’s energy flow (in plug-in hybrid models) and has handy family features like a quiet mode that cuts sound to the rear speakers. While we’re on the subject, a Harman Kardon stereo is on the options list and sounds clear and punchy.
On top of the prominent large screens, you get a single strip of haptic buttons with functions that change depending on what you're doing in the car's infotainment screen.
The 2022 Kia Sportage is slightly longer and wider than the old model and has a longer wheelbase.
Hardly a surprise that it has more interior space then. Upfront, there’s loads of room even if you’re tall and the GT Line car we tried had electrical seat and lumbar adjustment. The seats themselves are firm and supportive, we’d imagine they’d be great on a long journey.
It’s much the same in the back, where you’ll find an adjustable backrest that means your rear-seat passengers can recline their backrest to take the sting out of long journeys. Even with someone tall sitting in the front, there’s plenty of room in there for tall adults and there’s no shortage of headroom even with the panoramic roof fitted. Both outer seats also have Isofix mounting points for baby seats.
The middle seat does without Isofix, but it should be fine for adults. Okay, so the centre seat is a little firmer and the transmission tunnel eats into the foot room but getting comfortable is still relatively easy.
There’s no shortage of storage spaces with all four doors getting large pockets, there’s also a big glovebox and a tray in the front with wireless charging for your smartphone. You get lots of nice touches in the back seat, too, with USB plugs and shopping hooks integrated into the backs of the front seats. Even the interior lighting is in the form of pure white LEDs.
The 590-litre boot is a substantial 86 litres bigger than the Nissan Qashqai’s and the lid opens and closes electrically. Everything about the load bay is practical. The opening is huge and there’s no load lip to heave heavy luggage over. The back seats fold flat by pulling a couple of easily reached handles at the front of the boot and the parcel shelf is light and simple to remove. You can store it in a dooket under the floor.
There you’ll find a large storage space partitioned into sections – it’s a useful place to store valuables when the parcel shelf isn’t in place.
The 2022 Kia Sportage is available as a plug-in hybrid, hybrid, mild-hybrid petrol, mild-hybrid diesel or conventional diesel. You can also choose from a six-speed manual or seven-speed automatic gearbox, front or four-wheel drive.
The range-topper is the 265PS PHEV. Exact details have yet to be revealed but expect it to have a pure-electric range of more than 30 miles, ideal if you do lots of short journeys and can charge the car at home.
If you can’t, the 230PS regular hybrid will be a better bet. It’ll like be capable of fuel economy of around 50mpg thanks to being able to run on electric power alone for short periods.
Want to stick with your petrol for now? Well, you can choose from 150 or 180PS versions which use the same 1.6-litre petrol engine as both of the hybrid models. Both cars have mild-hybrid technology which acts as a super-powered start-stop system, making fuel savings of around 5mpg on a same-spec car without the tech.
Diesel may be a dirty word to some – thank confused government legislation for that – but its torque delivery means it’s still ideal for shifting a heavy SUV. In the Sportage, you can choose from 115 and 136PS models, both of which will be ideal if you do lots of motorway driving.
Speaking of which, the Sportage will be available with a raft of autonomous driving features that mean it can accelerate, brake and steer itself on the motorway and in queuing traffic. You can even park it remotely using Kia’s smartphone app, or stay in the driver's seat and make use of the reversing camera and a 360-degree bird's-eye view camera.
Any other highlights? That about covers it for now although it’s worth noting that, in a Sportage first, the new model is available with adjustable dampers that mean you can choose from a firm or a softer ride, for more control or added comfort.
Stay tuned to this page for more on the new Sportage when we have it.
With a new Kia Sportage on the way, it does of course mean there will be some cracking deals on the outgoing model. You can read our full review of the Kia Sportage here.
Have a scan of heycar's Kia Sportage listings and you'll see £9000 is enough to get you behind the wheel of a current, 2016 model fitted with a 132PS petrol engine in basic '1' trim and with a mileage of less than 60,000.
Up your budget to £16,000 and you can have a sporty looking GT Line model from 2016 fitted with the more punchy 138PS diesel engine and showing a mileage of fewer than 30,000 miles. Meanwhile, £26,000 is enough to get you a facelifted 2021 car with a handful of miles and Kia's powerful 174PS 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol engine.