Video: 2016 Kia Sorento - First Look

It's been completely redesigned now. Let's see how it continues to fulfill that mission. Design inspiration for the new Sorento comes from Kia's Cross GT concept, and the car looks a lot upfront like the new Sedona minivan, the redesigned one. The grill here sort of sweeps around into the headlights, which themselves kind of sweep back toward the front fenders there. Not a terribly interesting look, but pretty clean overall. One interesting feature down here are these fog lights. Sort of this quadrant here. Kia's been doing that on a few of its cars. Eh, see what you think. Let's take a look at the back. The Sorento has five trim levels. This one here at the auto show in SXL. Top of the line. Very kind of horizontally oriented tail here. You've got a lot of layering between the stacked elements here coming all the way up into these tail lights here. Wraparound styling, again, a very clean design, like up front. I see hints of Volkswagen back here, a little bit of the Dodge Durango. All very good looking cues, so not a bad look. Inside, a fairly basic shelf like dashboard, but a large center screen here with Kia's UVO system, that means your voice. It's their multimedia system. And very straightforward controls below that. Two large knobs for climate dials. Big buttons below that for things like heated seats, heated steering wheel. Storage areas important in an SUV, obviously. Lots of them. There's a big bin here ahead of the gearshift and a pretty decent sized center console. A few more pockets here to throw coins and other things. Taller drivers take note. The seats in the new Sorento have really impressive adjustment range. I'm six feet tall, and I sit, oh, a good two, three inches of it all the way back here. So if you're much larger than me, you're probably gonna be able to fit okay. Now let's take a look at those second and third rows. Second row leg room in the Sorento is pretty good. That's where I'd sit to drive. The seat could sit a little bit higher off the floor for adults to get enough thigh support, but headroom very good. Now this is a 40/20/40 split folding seat here, which means this comes down, either side comes down. Pretty impressive there as far as versatility. Not so impressive is the fact that a walk-in feature for the third row only comes on this passenger side. This side doesn't do it. It only folds down. Let's check out that third row real quick. Now Kia says there's another inch and a half of access space to the third row. Still kind of tight overall though, getting back here. Once you're here, headroom kind of tight, but leg room actually is okay, especially considering this is the second row all the way back. If you moved it forward a few clicks, adults might actually be able to fit back here for a short medium trip. Now Kia says that overall cargo space behind the third row in the new Sorento is up 20, 21% over the last Sorento. I got to say, 20% better than terrible is still terrible because it's really tight back here. However, these seats fold down very easily with these straps. Head restraints tuck in right there. And the Sorento is one of the few SUVs on the market to have second row seats that come down when you pull levers in the cargo area. They're spring loaded. They fall forward. Very simple conversion with maximum 74-ish cubic feet of cargo volume. Not bad. Two available four cylinder engines include a new two liter turbo four cylinder. There's also a V6, and towing capacity is all the way up to 5,000 pounds. The V6, you have to get if you want a third row. All of that and more comes when the Sorento is available on sale at dealerships starting in February of 2015. (engine revving)