Kia Sportage 1.6CRDi LX Long-Term: The best value-for-money choice

MILEAGE AT START: 3,116km

MILEAGE AFTER 3 MONTHS: 5,023km

PRICE: R655 995

SPECIFICATION

GOOD STUFF

Hard-wearing material. Economy. Credibility

BAD STUFF

Throttle response.

This is our official welcome to the Kia Sportage 1.6CRDi LX as it joins our long-term garage, post the shiny award it recently bagged at our inaugural TopGear South Africa Awards. Yes, we named the Sportage as our Family Car of the Year at the tail end of 2023, and this was just after its own 30-year birthday celebrations.

The Sportage is a fabled nameplate that is no stranger to winning awards. However, it now plays in a segment of cars that is the second most popular in the South African context and therefore, its competition is immense. There is no shortage of good cars in the segment that cater to various price points, yet the Sportage has managed to command its own share of the market.

So here it is, just over a month into its long-term cycle, and there’s a real sense of why this product works so well. The 1.6CRDi LX is the entry level for the line-up, as it represents the best value-for-money choice. The LX is fitted with cloth seats as opposed to the multi-fabric seats from the GT-Line.

The infotainment screen is a large 12.3-inch unit, yet the driver’s display is just over an inch smaller than that on the GT-Line. 17-inch wheels and a simplified body kit reveal a less sporty design than the fancy GT-Line S that commands a great deal of attention.

That said, the LX still retains tech niceties such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, as well as the convenience and safety of cruise control with forward collision and lane-keeping assistance. Smart climate control remains, too, as do things like auto-hold and hill descent control. It’s an entry into the Sportage range, but it is decently appointed despite this, and that’s a good first impression.

The next impressive part of the Sportage 1.6CRDi LX is its powertrain, which is uncharacteristic of the segment, yet still commendable. Kia has opted to continue on the path of turbodiesel power for the near future, and this 1.6-litre unit mated to a 7-speed dual-clutch auto box is exactly what consumers need within our current economic climate and lifestyle.

It is frugal yet powerful enough for the job at hand. We have averaged 5.9l/100km at times on longer distances, while our overall fuel consumption figure after 1,907 kilometres is sitting at 6.7l/100km. Where most of the other OEMs have ploughed their product planning efforts into hybrids and smaller capacity turbo-petrol motors, this diesel still strikes the right balance, and we commend that.

Our one concern with the powertrain delivery has to do with the throttle response on the Sportage, which exhibits an intermittent lag, generally when you approach an intersection and lift off the throttle before needing to accelerate again. It is sometimes at this point that the throttle simply doesn’t respond to your foot’s intention and instead seems to bog down before it

corrects itself. It isn’t simply turbo lag because, for the most part, it works fine, but this is an issue that we have experienced before during our December holiday driving another Sportage GT-Line model that you can read about elsewhere in this magazine.

That aside, the Sportage has proven to be pleasantly frugal and commendably comfortable as a daily family haulier, but there’s another side to the SUV that has been quite impressive: it’s a less obvious trait but one that is very important for owners.

Durability. The build quality is very good, but the material mix, particularly the trim surrounding the gear shifter, the dashboard, the doors, and even within the boot, is well thought out. It exhibits an enduring durability that makes the car absolutely suited to the daily bumps and scrapes of a family’s routine. From soccer practice to swimming events, from plant shopping to loading groceries, the Kia never makes you flinch at the thought of damaging its trim.

Our long-term Kia Sportage finished in a Blue Frame hue has landed well within the needs of the family and work requirements. The next few weeks will see it tackle a family holiday to a game farm in the North West province as well as a work-related project in the Drakensberg.

We’ll bring you more on its long-haul ability as well as its performance with a few thousand more kilometres under its belt.

MILEAGE AT START: 3,116km

MILEAGE AFTER 3 MONTHS:  7,034km

PRICE: R655,995

SPECIFICATION

GOOD STUFF

Solid, kid-proof build quality

BAD STUFF

Still the throttle issue. Single CarPlay port. 

After two months with the entry-level Kia Sportage, it is well and truly a normal part of the daily family grind. During our first report, approximately 800 kilometres of the 2,000 we travelled consisted of open-road cruising. Our second month with the car has enjoyed none of that. It’s been weeks of routine back-and-forth between the office, the kids’ extracurriculars, and meetings, all of which are within a 20-kilometre radius of home.

One trip to O.R. Tambo and back constitutes the longest trip we’ve done in the last month, and so it makes sense that our average fuel consumption has crept up by 0.6l/100km. The fuel gauge reading sits at 7.0l/100km for the full test period of 3,918 kilometres. That’s still commendable for the Sportage, and I’m fairly certain that number will go down over the next few weeks as we aim for some longer drives to the Berg and back. 

That said, and given what we’ve demanded from the car, the Kia Sportage continues to be a pleasant family car. The rubber matting in the boot is an excellent choice due to its non-slip nature, but it also protects the cloth floor underneath when spills happen. A simple shake and wipe gets it back to normal, and there’s no need for excessive carpet cleaning. 

Another key quality for a car like this is its relationship with dust, dirt, and grime. Three active children, each of whom seems busier than I am, can be taxing on a car. Dirty soccer boots, wet swimming towels, and snacks, for instance, quickly find their way onto the seats and panels within the cabin. The Sportage’s hard-wearing material is a winner here because it’s easy to clean, except for the cloth seats. The cloth seats and the infotainment screen can become problematic, whether due to spills or oily fingers on the touchscreen. I’ve resorted to keeping a microfiber cloth in the car to keep the screen clean and dust-free every few days. 

Another small annoyance is the fact that only one of the USB ports gives access to the Android Auto or Apple CarPlay pairing. With two ports in the centre console, one USB-A and one USB-C, a preference would be to have both options connecting to the applications. It’s a small thing, but it’s become noticeably more frustrating as time goes on, and we find ourselves forgetting to take the correct cable. 

We will be sending the vehicle to the dealership to resolve the throttle issue we reported last month. Expect some additional information in the next magazine on how Kia has handled the issue. We’ll also report on this from a technical perspective as well as a customer service perspective, as these are the exact experiences that owners could face. 

Besides that, the Sportage remains a great complement to our family. It has just won yet another award in the ‘Best Family Car’ SUV category from one of our competitors, another publication that agrees with our sentiment. As we head into our third month with the winning SUV, we’re keen to see how the greater ownership experience plays out and how the car itself continues to perform beyond the 10,000km mark, with some harder working trips under its belt as well. 

MILEAGE AT START: 3,116km

MILEAGE AFTER 4 MONTHS:  9,114km

PRICE: R655,995

SPECIFICATION

GOOD STUFF

Build quality. Fuel Consumption. 

BAD STUFF

Absence of front parking sensors

The Kia Sportage has spent nearly 15 weeks in the TopGear SA garage, averaging around 400 kilometres per week. Most of that has been spent in the monotony of the daily grind. To and froing from the office and back, to meetings and back, to extracurricular activities, etc. The Sportage hadn’t quite done a long, open-road journey until we stretched its legs on a short family holiday to the Central Drakensberg. 

The route we took consisted of open highway driving on the N3 southbound, dodging a multitude of trucks, tyre debris, pedestrians (on the highway, yes), and even some no-nonsense National Highway Patrol officers keeping the law in check. Apart from those challenges, though, the Kia Sportage wasn’t a challenge at all. Before heading out, we stopped at our local filling station to fill tanks, hike pressures, and check liquids. The Sportage was loaded to the hilt with all the holiday garb that a family of five can pull together. Clothing, sporting equipment, the airfryer and coffee plungers (you can’t leave home without these), and a large 85-litre coolerbox were creatively ordered into the Sportage’s 560-litre boot. Add 250kg of people, and you have a well-loaded vehicle. 

Despite the weight, the Kia Sportage settled into a comfortable and casual journey, keeping the fuel consumption figure well below 5.4l/100km for most of the journey. Some 360 kilometres later, as the sun descended below the mountain peaks, we found ourselves off the highway and battling a potholed strip of road towards Winterton. Visibility was poor and the roads even worse, and so the Kia’s automatic high beam assist came into effect, as did the appreciation of some ground clearance and the Waze app on the Apple CarPlay display that highlighted the worst sections of road before we reached them. Don’t you love it when social applications work for you? 

The journey back up to Jozi was less eventful, such was the joy of leaving earlier and choosing a better route. After a few whistle-stop tours to various parts of the Central Drakensberg, we made it back to Joburg with 100km of range still left in the diesel tank. Total mileage on our trip: 938 kilometres at an average of 5.6 litres per 100km. That’s impressive, even considering the price of diesel in Joburg. 

This LX Sportage is good, even in this ‘base’ specification. Only one thing has started to make its absence felt, particularly on this trip, in the parking spaces of all the restaurants, coffee shops, adventure centres, and fuel stations, and that is parking sensors at the front. The reversing camera and sensors work well, but having sensors on the front would make a huge difference. That said, the Sportage remains as robust and well-built as when it arrived almost four months ago. Overall fuel consumption over the entire period is sitting at 6.9l/100km, a slight downtick from our last report, and that is perhaps in part due to the longer road trip to the Drakensberg. Either way, it’s impressive. 

Over the course of the next month, the Sportage will at some point need to go in for its first service, where we will experience the brand from this point of view. The dealer won’t know that we’re journalists, so the report will be from an owner’s perspective.