Kia Sportage - Engines, performance and drive

​Comfort and refinement are the Kia Sportage’s key strengths. Its soft suspension set-up means this family SUV is able to deal effectively with bumps in the road and reduce any unpleasant jolts intruding into the cabin. 

There is a feeling that you’re not particularly well-connected to the road at times, especially over uneven surfaces and mid-corner undulations, while the Sportage will lean heavily into faster corners. If you’re after a sportier drive, you may wish to consider the Mazda CX-5 or even the SEAT Ateca, because both offer a better pedigree for tackling the twisty stuff.

You’ll find the steering a touch light and lacking in feel, but the payoff is that the Sportage is easy to pilot around town and in heavier urban traffic — where it’s likely family buyers will be doing most of their driving. Kia has done a good job reducing wind and road noise from the cabin. Even at higher speeds, it’s all very civilised.

Unfortunately, if you want the most out of the Sportage, this engine sounds unpleasant when accelerating hard. In fact, when we tested the regular petrol version, in particular, we found a diesel-like roughness in its delivery.

0-62mph acceleration and top speed

The mild-hybrid petrol Sportage is the least potent in the line-up, but it still returns a respectable 157bhp and a 0-62mph sprint time of 9.8 seconds for the manual – a slightly swifter 9.3 seconds sprint is achieved by the dual-clutch automatic. The manual has a top speed of 119mph, while the auto is marginally slower at 117mph. 

The 212bhp full-hybrid's extra punch dispatches the 0-62mph run in 8.4 seconds, while the all-wheel drive set-up's extra weight increases the full hybrid's benchmark sprint time to 8.7 seconds. Both versions have a top speed of 115 mph.

The most expensive plug-in hybrid model has more power at 261bhp, but has a bigger, heavier battery and standard four-wheel drive, so it doesn’t get from 0-62mph any faster than the full-hybrid’s 8.4 second time. The top speed is slightly reduced at 112mph.