2011 Kia Sportage SX First Impressions

[ahmed_7erzon]

Homestead Speedway, Florida—Who ever heard of a CUV being introduced at a racetrack? Normally, CUVs and SUVs are relegated to cottage trails and bumpy, half paved roads. Not at Kia; the new SX Sportage comes with a 256 horsepower, 2.0 litre, twin scroll turbo and intercooled four with a six speed automatic. If you listen to Kia, country trails are fine and the Sportage will do that with ease. What they wanted to showcase was the other extreme: The Sportage at speed and how it handles have been virtually ignored, until now.


Kia took journalists to Homestead Motor Speedway in Florida for the new Optima launch and to show us what the Sportage could do. Our track layout was the road course that makes use of the main straights and most of one banked corner on this super speedway. Terminal velocity going into the braking area of the back straight was up around 160 km/h, if you worked at getting the corners right.

After about 15 laps, with breaks every three laps to adjust driver attitude and listen to the instructors, my terminal speeds weren’t that much higher on the long straights, but were significantly higher on the shorter ones thanks to much improved cornering technique.

The fact that the Sportage let me improve so much showed that engineers had designed a great street vehicle. Suspension components are fairly traditional MacPherson struts up front and multi-link in the rear. Components have been sport tuned and utilize Kia's double valve shock absorbers and struts to control body movement quite effectively.

In addition, wheel size is increased to 18 inches and the brake rotor diameters increase to fill the space available, which is why I never experienced any fade. On a race track, think of it as making eight panic stops every minute and 30 seconds for five minutes and you get the idea of how hard the binders and discs had to work on the race track.

While the suspension was busy keeping the shiny side up, the front buckets were doing a very credible job of holding me in place so that I could drive comfortably and not slide from one side to the other. Subtle, but well placed side and thigh bolsters held me during hard cornering and kept me from feeling like I was bouncing around in a dryer. Getting into a proper overall driving position only took a few seconds of playing with the power seat adjustors.

These same basic seats are used across the line up. It’s just that with the SX, the coverings are a bit more up market. It should also be noted that if the seat works for you on the road, it will do a better than average job when the going gets rough off road as well.


The SX Sportage is a well thought out CUV that has left its days of being a YEEHAAAA vehicle bouncing through a swamp far behind. It truly crosses over between road and off road with excellent manners in both cases