► It’s the new 2016 Kia Sportage
► New spy photos spill details
► Best look yet inside new cabin
The new Kia Sportage is due to make its first public outing at the 2015 Frankfurt motor show – but our spies have been snooping all around, and inside, the new crossover a couple of months early.
This car was spotted on test near the company’s European technical centre in Frankfurt, Germany, wearing only modest disguise over final production bodywork. And we were able to poke around inside enough to see a large, eight-inch Infinity touchscreen infotainment system, a steering wheel very like the helm of an Optima and split-zone climate control.
Even the bin-bag camouflage can’t mask the exterior design’s sloping front end and a more steeply raked roofline, designed to attract passing compliments more than accommodate lofty headwear in row two, we’d wager.
The new 2016 Kia Sportage: specs, what we know
In those tall-sided high-profile 16-inch tyres, we can detect a pleasing focus on ride quality over posing. It’s a lower-spec model, therefore, with no ice-cube style foglights or LED lighting visible on this late prototype.
Expect to see a similar engineering specification to the latest 2016 Tucson from sister brand Hyundai: a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission is offered, sending drive to the front wheels in most cases or all four corners on higher-spec models. Downsized petrol and diesel engines are expected, and Kia is likely to engineer in the group’s new hyper-tiny 1.2 T-GDI engine in addition to the more carry-over 1.6 petrol and 1.7 plus 2.0 diesels expected from launch.
See the recent KX3 SUV concept from the 2014 Guangzhou motor show in China for further clues as to the new 2016 Sportage.