Yahoo Autos 2016 Kia Sorento: Real World Review
2016 Kia Sorento: Real World Review
What is it? A five- or seven-passenger SUV, built by the Korean automaker in its Georgia plant.
Price as tested: $45,095 for a 5-passenger Sorento SXL AWD
Competitors: Honda Pilot, Ford Explorer, Toyota Highlander
Alternatives: Hyundai Santa Fe, Chevrolet Traverse
Pros: Good looking inside and out, cavernous hatch in the 5-seater
Cons: Big, a bit thirsty, some snotty types may grouse about the badge
Would I Buy It With My Own Money? Yes, without reservation.
If car design were easy, we’d have more beautiful cars.
Instead, if you look across the fields of metal around America’s car dealerships today, what strikes me (and I know I’m not alone) is just how similar most models have become. Cars that look like river stones. Sport utilities that look like slightly taller river stones. Vehicles with some random angles and chamfers and flares, often thrown around in a way that suggests human design but could just have easily come from an algorithm.
Quick, name this model without searching
Auto designers will cite lots of reasons for why this wet blanket of sameness has fallen over their work — cost, safety rules, aerodynamics for fuel economy — but history shows that effective, sustained creativity on an industrial scale just isn’t a strong suit of many corporations. Automakers know that bending ugly metal and plastic costs just as much as making it attractive, yet getting from dull to beautiful vehicles — and staying there — has proven a recurring challenge.
What does this have to do with the 2016 Kia Sorento? Because Kia, surprisingly, has quietly become one of the most well-designed mass-market car brands on American roads. Under the direction of Peter Schreyer, a former Audi/Volkswagen designer, the Kia lineup has taken on a consistent yet modern and pleasing form, in a way that far larger brands still struggle to produce. And that approach pays huge dividends when you ask people to spend $45,000 on a family hauler.
Mechanically and physically, the new Sorento coves a huge territory, competing against three-row, V-6-powered machines like the Toyota Highlander on the high end and compact SUVs like the Honda CR-V on the low end. Of the three available engines — a 290-hp V-6, a 185-hp four-cylinder and a turbocharged 240-hp four — my tester had the turbo and six-speed transmission with all-wheel-drive and no third row, creating a cavernous storage space. It was also a top-of-the-line example; less well-appointed editions start around $26,000.
From the outside, the Sorento looks composed and unique by family SUV standards; you won’t need a tennis ball on an antenna to find it in the mall parking lot. Inside, it’s the small touches — the double-stitching on the dash, the fairly sensible button layout — that put the Sorento into luxury-brand territory. It’s another car industry cliche to put much stock in the sound a door makes when it closes, but the Sorento does have a solidity and a deep “shunk” that was once strictly associated with German machines. Yes, the design means visibility isn’t great out the rear, but the tester’s 360-view backup cameras and blind-spot warning systems mitigated those issues.
Even with 240 hp, the Sorento was not a fast car, but fast enough for daily aggravated city driving, reflected by my test mileage of 18.4 mpg versus the 19 mpg city/25 mpg highway that the feds estimate. Ride quality runs firm, more so than much of the competition, but not uncomfortably so, and my smaller rear passengers didn’t bounce around over bumps. It’s not a sports car, but it doesn’t drive larger than it is like some other SUVs.
Kia came to the United States as the bargain brand of the Hyundai empire, which has put some people off its higher price tags. In truth, it still has some bargain appeal: As some automakers cut their warranties, the Sorento still comes with a 10-year/100,000-mile backing on its powertrain, and five years/60,000 miles of roadside assistance. It gets five stars in federal crash tests and “good” scores across the board in insurance-industry ones. (It has collision warning and lane departure alarms, but not the automatic braking now required for a “top pick.”) More new buyers than ever have put this kind of vehicle on their radars, and I would say the Kia Sorento deserves to be on every midsize SUV shopping list. If you’re parking a vehicle in front of your house for the next several years, why not pick something that stands out?
