With Cape Town sweltering and holiday season crowds taking over, it was the ideal time for Gareth Dean to escape the city and see how the striking new Sportage fared on a journey up the West Coast to the picturesque seaside town of Paternoster…
There are few better ways to get acquainted with your car than heading out of the suburban sprawl and taking to the open road; something I undertook during the festive season with a trip to the picturesque West Coast town of Paternoster. While the arrow-straight R27 was never going to challenge the Sportage dynamically, the varying road surfaces, high temperatures (the mercury brushing the 35-degree mark in this instance) and 320 km of motorway-speed travel would be a good testbed to unearth any quirks that may have lain dormant in round-town driving. Here are some of our findings…
That boot is spacious
Although our excursion party was limited to two people, you can always count on at least one of your group being a ‘ready-for-anything’ type, so the requisite beach gear (body boards, cooler boxes) along with copious amounts of supplies and Christmas presents destined for the folks we were visiting, were slung boot-wards with reckless abandon. Thankfully, the new Sportage’s boot is more generously proportioned than that of its forebear, being a shade over 500 litres versus the previous car’s 320, and made light work of shouldering the load.
It’s solid on most surfaces
The Sportage’s space-age cabin, with its expansive digital dashboard, was met with a requisite ‘ooooh’ of approval from my passenger but as is often the case, these folks coming in cold from driving less complex cars will pick up on any quirks that may have gone unchecked by a long-termer’s regular pilot. One such observation concerned an intermittent trim buzz that surfaced at motorway speeds on the West Coast road’s admittedly coarse tarmac. Being the type that often drives with both the climate control and audio system dialled hard right, it was only in the company of a less heat-prone and more conversationally inclined passenger nixing such driving habits that a buzz from beneath the steering column announced its presence. A quick inspection during a refreshment stop en-route didn’t reveal any loose trim – something I wouldn’t have expected given the standard of the Sportage’s interior fittings – and subsequent progress at lower speeds seemed to squash the errant buzz. I can only surmise that it was a result specific resonance on the abrasive road surface, as we were unable to replicate this noise when travelling on the smoother tarmac of the N1 and N2 during our return leg, it will be interesting to keep an ear out in future to see if this is indeed the case.
Drive modes make a difference
As anyone who’s traversed the West Coast road will know, despite its horizon-chasing straits it is a stretch of road that brings out a diverse range of driving styles. Some go hell-for-leather, chasing an escape from a crowded and sweltering Cape Town, while others seem to fall into a sort of driving torpor that sees them dawdling along with little danger of broaching the 120 km/h limit on offer. Throw in a plentiful supply of lorries and you have yourself a surprisingly unrelaxing sojourn along this barren but beautiful slice of road.
Much as I did with the air-con and audio system, my default driving manner would mostly see the Sportage’s drivetrain management system left in its Eco setting, its leisurely throttle and transmission mapping contributing to a respectable 7,62 L/100 km on this particular trip. This was partly owing to the negligible impact of the system’s Sport setting on driving characteristics in the larger, diesel-engined Kia Sorento that previously featured in our long-term fleet. Now, confronted with lumbering commercial vehicles and dozy day-trippers, I decided to revisit the Sport setting on the centre console-mounted dial to see if it would lend some overtaking pep to the Sportage. The result was palpable. The leisurely gearshift pattern and soft throttle modulation immediately made way for a noticeably more alert mapping and a far more responsive accelerator that allowed me to mine into the 132 kW and 265 N.m on offer with little delay. The difference was sufficient to keep me reaching for the selector every time a trundling truck or overtaking gap presented itself, making these normally risky manoeuvres a far less stressful affair.
Kia Sportage 1,6 T-GDI GT-Line S Fast Facts
Price: R749 995
Engine: 1,6-litre, 4-cylinder turbopetrol
Transmission: 7-speed, dual-clutch automatic
Power: 132 kW @ 5 500 r/min
Torque: 265 N.m @ 1 500 r/min
Achieved fuel consumption: 7,62 L/100 km
Total distance travelled: 5 234 km
