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Kia may be busy developing the next-generation Sportage due next year, but we now know exactly when the mid-size SUV will be revealed, not to mention go on sale.
According to Korean Car Blog, the new Toyota RAV4 and Mazda CX-5 rival will be revealed in April, while CarsGuide has previously reported it will go on sale in Australia around September.
We also understand Kia is planning a teaser campaign for the ‘NQ5’ Sportage, with it to start sometime in the next six months, likely providing a tantalising drip feed of information about the model.
What is for sure, though, is the next Sportage won’t completely follow in the tyre tracks of the related and recently revealed new-generation Hyundai Tucson, which is available with both ‘self-charging’ and plug-in hybrid powertrains.
Instead, the only hybrid version of the next Sportage will be of the mild variety, and it will be built in Slovakia for Europe, a market with strict emissions regulations, unlike Australia.
Once again, local examples of the Sportage will be exclusively sourced from South Korea, but it’s not yet known if the new model will use carryover naturally aspirated petrol and turbocharged diesel engines here.
A camouflaged development mule of the next Sportage was spied testing in its domestic market as recently as earlier this month, with it appearing to have a different design language to the new-generation Sorento large SUV, which just went on sale in Australia.
Either way, Kia’s local general manager of product planning, Roland Rivero, previously told CarsGuide “a lot of investments have been put into Sportage over the years”, and the next model “is going to continue that tradition”, so expect it to be a marked improvement.
For reference, the current-generation Sportage is priced from $28,690 (manual S petrol) to $48,190 plus on-road costs (automatic GT-Line diesel).
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