Kia's family-friendly Sorento SUV was redesigned for 2016 with fresh styling, quality interior materials & a feature-filled cabin. Although the turbocharged four-cylinder has plenty of pep, a light, numb steering feel subtracts some driving comfort.
Transcript
(car engine starting) Redesigned for 2016, the Kia Sorento is an all star family hauler with standout styling, capable yet efficient drive trains and a comfortable feature filled cabin.
Now we've already covered this cars' styling and space in a separate video. We've had the chance now to get behind the wheel. So we'll talk about drivability, features, and quality. Now the redesigned Sorento's cabin is pretty straightforward, but materials are actually really good in our well equipped test car here. A nice level of consistency between the upper parts of the dashboard and the lower parts. You don't see a lot of kind of cheaper materials once you get below a certain level. Obviously all the areas where your arms and your elbows fall, arm rest here, parts of the upper doors, those are nicely padded. And a lot of premium touches, premium features in this car as well. Things like heated and ventilated seats, heated steering wheel, this panoramic moon roof overhead, and things like a one touch windows for the front and the rears and fabric down the a and the b pillars. All very nice touches. Typically things you got to kind of get up to a luxury car to get, but here you find them in key his flagship SUV. Now our car has a navigation system. Editors have found it very easy to connect their Bluetooth, to work the Pandora interface. And a nifty feature, when you're navigating somewhere, there is a cancel route button that's right on the screen here. You don't have to hunt it down in a sub menu. Now our test car has a turbocharged four cylinder engine. It's the middle choice among the three available engines in the Sorento. A little bit of accelerator lag at first, but after that, pretty decent passing power, even with multiple adults on board. And EPA combined gas mileage in the low twenties. Not too bad for a larger crossover. Doesn't really make much of a case for going for the optional V6 engine in this car. Now, some editors took a little bit of issue with ride quality, found it a little bit too jittery on the highway. And we all had kind of more problems with steering feel, a continuing issue for Kia, unfortunately. A little bit numb at all speeds, even in sport mode. It takes too many corrections on the highway. Wind noise and road noise on the other hand, very well controlled. This is a pretty quiet car, even on a windy day. Even at 60, 70 miles per hour. Adults should find enough room in the second row and our test car here doesn't have the Sorento's optional third row. Now behind the second row, a little less than 40 cubic feet of space, plenty of room for some sports gear, lighter equipment here. If you really want to load up on tailgating equipment, maybe camping gear, you're going to want to go for one of the larger three row crossovers out there. And that really goes to show that the Sorento kind of still straddles these segments between a mid-size and a full-size three row crossover, not quite as big as the latter category. But if you don't need that much space, maybe if you're a smaller family, not a bigger family, the Sorento has a lot to like, especially with this redesign. (music ends) (trunk closing)
