Kia Sportage: Endurance test

4.52 meters that stay in your mind. The Kia Sportage is manufactured in Žilina, Slovakia, and its lines are aimed at European tastes. The GT-line brings joy into the house.

Photo: Christoph Börries/Car Whiz

Kia Sportage 1.6 CRDi with 48-volt electrical system and 136 hp, painted in Experience Green and with everything that is good and expensive: GT-line with 19-inch wheels, the great Kia navigation system, which most people could use intuitively and whose voice control is on a par with German premium cars, with a seven-speed dual clutch that doesn’t jerk when starting off. Test car price: 50,620 euros. After an initial 520-kilometer business trip, tester Rolf Klein was blown away: “Hooray for diesel! Even driving along the highway doesn’t push consumption above 8.5 liters.”

We used an average of 7.9 liters of diesel over 50,271 kilometers. And it was even better when driving at a leisurely pace: “After almost 6,000 kilometers on business, the mileage was at six,” summed up Car Whiz KLASSIK reporter Andreas May. Like many others, he and test driver Stefan Mallach said of the Sportage: “136 hp are enough, the engine knocks, but more power is not necessary!” But then, more precisely at 53,514 kilometers, we would have liked more power. What had happened?

First the heater failed, then the power was lost and the engine control light came on. And the first diagnosis: the car is losing coolant! The Kia press workshop immediately found one detail odd: the mechanics were looking at the inlet and outlet lines to the heat exchanger, where two clamps are actually mounted, but our Sportage had a screw clamp. Had another workshop found water loss here and replaced the clamp?

Design? It’s in the eye of the beholder. We think: it stands out with its fine, elegant lines.

Photo: Christoph Börries/Car Whiz

If so, it was too late. The car continued to lose coolant, so Kia Germany and Car Whiz looked deep into the eyes and decided: This thing is getting too hot for us, we’re going to end this here. When dismantling the engine, both the Kia men and DEKRA assessor Marcus Constantin found the damage straight away: a tiny hairline crack in the bridge area between the third and fourth cylinders. “The car had too little coolant, which led to thermal overload,” the DEKRA man sums it up. And the Kia people are honest, saying: We sold 16,513 cars with this engine, 5,076 of which were in the Sportage.

Command center: easy-to-read instruments and XXL touchscreen.

Photo: Christoph Börries/Car Whiz

Eight cases are known across all models, two of which are related to the Sportage. It’s a good thing that Kia offers a seven-year or 150,000-kilometer guarantee. Kia would have paid 3,305.31 euros plus tax and assembly for the block.

“After a detailed joint analysis, we assume that a gradual loss of coolant, probably caused by a leak in a hose, led to the damage identified. To date, more than 16,500 vehicles with this engine have been sold in Germany alone. We only had to record a similar damage pattern in eight of them. That corresponds to a rate of 0.05 percent. Affected customers are of course protected by the Kia manufacturer’s warranty for seven years or 150,000 km.” Susanne Mickan, press officer for Kia Germany

A regrettable exception! Only two Kia Sportages had their engines fail due to a lack of coolant – the Car Whiz endurance test was one of them. It’s a shame. Because we have taken the compact SUV to heart as a comfortable touring car with reasonable fuel consumption, we like the space, manners and multimedia. Everything is top notch. The engine failure has spoiled the otherwise great Sportage’s record.