Vomiting, nausea, headache, occasional violent outbursts: family road trips don’t feature in most motoring advertising, for good reason. Kids in car adverts are big on pointing out of the ample windows at nature and smiling at each other lovingly... not so big on scrapping about who’s turn it is on the iPad or who’s next in line to stuff broken Pom-Bears into the deepest recesses of the back seat.
The Kia Sportage sits firmly in that over-saturated motoring category, the family-friendly “crossover”. Crossovers themselves exist somewhere in the hinterland between bona fide 4x4’s (too big, too thirsty, impractical in town) and family hatchbacks (too small, too unsexy, hell, just too meh). The mid-sized Kia goes shoulder to (hard) shoulder with mini SUV titans such as the Ford Kuga, Mazda’s CX5, Peugeot’s 3008 and the mighty Nissan Qashqai. Standing out in this competitive group is tough and the Kia’s USP has always been more VFM than OMG.
We drove the 1.6 CRDi 48v 4. Translated, that's a 1,598cc diesel engine paired with a 48 volt/0.44 kilowatt hour lithium ion battery. A mild hybrid. You heard that right, a diesel hybrid. For me, that was like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader – good and bad cop all rolled into one. But actually it makes sense. Take the great fuel economy and range of a diesel engine and pair it with the do-gooder credentials of an electric motor. Potter quietly around town or, in the case of the Sportage, supplement acceleration and you will extend the “off time” of the engine with what Kia calls a Mild-Hybrid-Starter-Generator-Unit or MHSG, snappy. The battery simply recharges itself when braking or coasting.
My ten-year-old daughter gasped in horror when she heard we were driving a diesel (like it actually ran on babies’ blood). Only by softening the blow with mention of hybrid engine and reasonable CO2 emissions were we pulled back from a full on road-side climate strike. To be fair, over the length of the road trip (from Suffolk to west Wales and back) we got a not-unimpressive average of 46mpg. Personally, I found this incredible after years of driving a 20-year-old VW Golf that struggled to make 26mpg. In fact with a “sliding scale” graphic of live mpg usage nestled between the rev counter and speedometer, the whole act of driving economically was somewhat gamified... “Can I just make 47 miles per gallon?”
On the road, the Sportage was unremarkable in a reassuring “Oh, are we there already?” way. Cornering was measured and predictable, broken roads and speed humps were dispatched in a not-exactly-smooth-but-definitely-efficient ride and motorway travel was a breeze with the cruise control. The whole experience was comfortable, if a little lacking in thrills or spills. The reliable brakes got a working over too, on no less than the “Steepest Road In The World” (Ffordd Pen Llech, in the historic town of Harlech). The only real disappointment driving the Sportage was when I realised its 4x4 looks, were just that... And a stressful wheel spin up a very steep Welsh farm track at our destination made me regret we didn’t have the real thing. To be fair, you can order the Sportage as a 134bhp all-wheel drive, too.
Where the Sportage came into its own, though, wasn’t the interior, exterior or drive quality – all fantastically middle-of-the-road (pun intended) – it was the infotainment system. With an eight inch central display and TomTom sat nav of its own, plus seamless integration of Android Auto for Google maps, Spotify, BBC Sounds and voice control (yes, Apple CarPlay is available, too), live weather updates and fuel prices at nearby filling stations are all a glance away. There’s also a cracking 360 degree "Around View" monitor, where you inexplicably see a video feed from around the whole vehicle from above (dark arts indeed) that make parking between lines in a car park an odd pleasure too.
The Kia proved to be a very likeable, no fuss, no nonsense (and, more importantly, no tantrums) family motor. And you can’t ask for much more than that.
£28,510. kia.com
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