It has been quiet around the Kia Sportage for a while and that is not without reason. Although the current generation still looks fresh, it is slowly but surely rolling into retirement. Now we see its successor for the first time.
The current Kia Sportage was a striking appearance when it was unveiled six years ago, and thanks to a refresher in 2018, it still is. Yet sales do not really go smoothly, at least not here in the Netherlands anymore, so it is not surprising that a new one is arriving. It is the task of the next Sportage to put Kia’s third most successful model back on the map in the Netherlands. It seems that the Koreans are taking a different path for that. At least, it remains extravagant, only in a slightly different way.
Although the camouflage department has already been practicing well for package evening, we can already discern a few things about the lines. The Sportage will soon share its basis with the new Hyundai Tucson and seems to have looked in the kitchen at Hyundai, especially for the front. Where the headlights of the current Sportage are still very high on the nose, they move to a fairly low spot in the front for the next generation. Kia may put the daytime running lights loose above, as is the case with the Hyundai Kona, for example. At the back it is a bit more conventional, but you can bet that there are also a lot of changes.
As mentioned, the next Sportage will be the Kia brother of the Tucson, so that already offers insight into what we can expect. In that case, a 150 hp 1.6 T-GDI mild hybrid will probably be the power source for the entry-level model, followed by a hybrid with an output of 230 hp, with the 265 hp plug-in hybrid above it as the topper. We are expecting a launch in the spring of 2021. The market introduction of the new Kia Sportage will probably take at least until the summer in that case.