THE five-door compact SUV wagon buyer faces an overwhelming choice of products, and the decision of which SUV to buy got just that little harder with the arrival of the Kia Sportage. The Sportage promises a level of sophistication that no Kia SUV has been able to achieve. Gone is the notion that with the Korean SUV you are buying old technology cheaply built. This is a suave entrée to the SUV market – but is it enough to sway buyers from the gold-standard Japanese competitors from the likes of Subaru and Toyota?

Sportage
Released: April 2005
Ended: January 2010
Family Tree: SportageKIA’s second-generation Sportage was a monumental leap forward from the cruddy (although pretty) original sold in Australia from 1996 to 2004., , Based on the first Hyundai Tucson, the KM initially was offered with just the 129kW/241Nm 2.7-litre V6 petrol driving all four wheels via a four-speed Tiptronic-style automatic gearbox., , This well-specified single model strategy was replaced by a multi-variation approach from August 2007, featuring a base 104kW/184Nm 2.0L four-cylinder petrol LX using either a five-speed manual or four-speed auto driving the front wheels only., , The V6 turned into the EX V6 and was joined by an up-spec EX-L V6, while a six-speed manual-only EX CRDi AWD arrived, sporting a new 103kW/304Nm 2.0-litre CRDi common-rail turbo-diesel powerplant.
Get the full story: Kia's Sportage is eons ahead of its forebear, but have small SUVs already moved on?
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