Kia Sorento: carsales Car of the Year 2020 contender

The new-generation Kia Sorento arrived in September, filled to brim with more tech, safety and equipment than ever before.

It marks a huge step forward for the South Korean brand’s seven-seat large SUV, which started life in the early 2000s with utilitarian body-on-frame underpinnings.

Today it’s stylish, refined, luxurious, safe, generously equipped and even fun to drive – something we couldn’t have said with much conviction before now.

Having already stolen bragging rights as a class leader from the Mazda CX-9 – the winner of the 2016 carsales Car of the Year – in our recent comparison test, the Sorento was an obvious inclusion for this year’s carsales COTY, proudly presented by Bingle.

Generous in both space and standard equipment, the new Kia Sorento is pitched at Aussie families of all sizes and from all walks of life.

With enough room to ferry around seven passengers in relative comfort, Kia’s all-new large SUV is also packed with the latest in safety and driver assistance features.

These include an advanced autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system, adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, driver attention warning, lane following assist and rear cross traffic collision avoidance assist. There are also seven airbags on board, including a centre front airbag.

It’s available with a 3.5-litre petrol V6 engine (200kW/332Nm) in front-wheel drive, as well as a 148kW/440Nm 2.2-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel.

Both engine options use an eight-speed automatic, while diesel-powered models are exclusively all-wheel drive.

So most bases are covered in terms of buyer appeal – and for those after a bit more sophistication in the powertrain department, there is a plug-in hybrid variant on its way early next year.

All the extra equipment and across-the-board improvements with the new Kia Sorento have brought price increases of up to almost $4000 on some variants, but on the whole the latest generation remains competitive in its class.

Pricing starts from $45,850 plus on-road costs for the base-spec front-wheel drive petrol-powered Sorento S – or $46,990 drive-away – and tops at $63,070 plus ORCs for the flagship Sorento GT-Line diesel ($64,990 drive-away).

There are S, Sport, Sport+ and GT-Line variants across both the petrol and diesel powertrain, with the oil-burners carrying a $3000 premium over the equivalent petrol grade.

Beyond the comprehensive safety spec already mentioned, the Kia Sorento comes with a generous amount of standard equipment right from entry level, including an 8.0-inch touch-screen infotainment system with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

Creature comforts and technology move up accordingly through the model range, the Sport featuring 10.2-inch touch-screen system, sat-nav, dual-zone climate control and a 10-way power-adjustable driver’s seat, while Sport+ introduces LED tail-lights, a powered tailgate, leather upholstery and more.

The top-spec GT-Line variants include claimed first-in-class features such as a first-in-class features, including a blind spot view monitor that delivers a live video stream of the left and right blind spots into the 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster whenever the indicator stalk is triggered.

There’s also a self-parking system that allows owners to start the engine and drive the Sorento (slowly), from outside the vehicle, using the key fob.

The flagship Kia Sorento GT-Line left a strong impression on carsales journalist Alexandra Lawrence during a recent test.

She concluded that it marked “a step change from its predecessor, which was a pretty good thing” and placed it “even further away from the kind of vehicles the brand has delivered before in terms of sophistication, fit and finish”.

The Sorento then went on to beat one of our favourite family SUVs, the Mazda CX-9, in a comparison by carsales news editor Sam Charlwood, who found the Kia “better equipped, better packaged and better suited dynamically to the needs of modern families”.

It all bodes well for a strong showing by the all-new Kia Sorento in the 2020 carsales Car of the Year, proudly presented by Bingle.

Kia Sorento Sport Diesel at a glance:
Price: From $51,470
Engine: 2.2-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel
Output: 148kW/440Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel: 6.1L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 159g/km (ADR Combined)