HIDE THE KEYS
You — and your significant other — will enjoy the new 2021 Kia Sorento
Most weeks I get to tool around town in a super shiny, brand-new, wellequipped, highly desirable vehicle. ¶ Some weeks — cue Kenny Rogers’ “Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town” — I stare at an empty driveway and wonder where Blonde Child-Bride has got off to this time? Ever since she noticed the insurance on the loan agreements includes “spouse,” she has been prone to run off with my ride.
This is especially true if she thinks I have procured one that will impress her BFF, Cindy Ramage, leaving me to sit sadly alone in my squeaky rocker, endlessly replaying in my bereft brain the cliff scene from Thelma and Louise.
This does not happen when I have a big, burly, four-wheel-drive truck that spews testosterone out the tailpipe. No, Great Love of My Life is a girly-girl. She likes things that are pretty, agile, and with refined aesthetics.
Thus, last week I found myself requesting seat time in the all-new Kia Sorento X-Line AWD. With a tightly stitched leather interior, crisply designed gauges and switchgear, a panoramic roof, Bose premium sound, powerful drivetrain, and superior ride and handling, the Sorento won my lady’s heart almost as quickly as I did.
Ok, that’s a lie. It took me a year to cajole her into having a single cup of coffee. Things picked up after that, despite urgings to the contrary from all her friends except Cindy, who somehow found me an acceptable beau. (Check’s in the mail, Cindy).
Another hit from Kia
One can be blithe about the 2021 Sorento because recommending this one is a no-brainer. Nearly everybody else already has. Car-and-Truck, Edmunds. com, Motor Trend, even U.S. News and World Report, which does meta-analyses of everyone else’s reviews, all put the new Sorento at or near the top of the ultra-competitive midsize SUV niche.
Priced from $29,390 for a wellequipped FWD base model to $43,115 (plus $1,170 shipping) for the top-of-line, turbocharged, AWD X-line, the Sorento is designed to carry up to seven passengers in near-luxury comfort. Our tester came with exceptionally comfortable middle captains’ chairs, but a bench is available for larger families. The Sorento boasts best-in-class overall passenger volume.
We found the cabin to be quiet and well-suited to keeping multiple passengers comfortable and engaged with devices. Cupholders and storage niches are abundant. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are standard. Six USB charging ports are standard on the base model, all others get eight.
We were impressed with the ride quality, sound suppression, and driving dynamics of a family vehicle that has a top speed of 131 mph. Front- and middle-row seating is comfortable and roomy. Like most midsize SUVs, the third row was cramped. Cargo space behind the third row is minimal, but with those seats folded at a touch of a button, the Sorento easily swallowed up a warehouse store run.
Safety first
Built on an all-new, 3rd generation “N3” platform the 2021 Sorento is a lighter, stronger, and more flexible design than previous models.
Standard are the most important driver-assist safety features: dynamic cruise control, forward-collision warnin and avoidance, and lane-keep assistance. Kia’s lane-follow assist is one of the better dialed-in systems we have encountered. It keeps the vehicle dynamically balanced in the center of the lane, rather than bouncing from side-to-side.
Like the better lane-keep systems we see, Kia’s does not annoy with an endless stream of audible warnings. It just keeps the car in its lane, avoiding the two most deadly crashes – rollovers and head-on collisions.
Available is a long list of desirable safety features, such as rear cross-traffic alert to keep from backing into someone’s path in a parking lot, blindspot monitoring, safe-exit assist that can alert occupants if they are opening doors in the path of oncoming traffic, and navigation-based cruise control which slows the vehicle if it is entering a curve at a too-high rate of speed.
Reputation for reliability
Over the past decade, the Sorento has built a reputation for reliability. At the end of the last generation Sorento, the only consistent weak spot was the fivespeed transmission. Kia addressed that with a new eight-speed on all models. Turbo models get a wet dual-clutch setup, which results in a lovely quickshift sound under heavy throttle.
Like its corporate twin Hyundai, all Kias come with the best warranties in the business: 5-year/60,000 miles basic and roadside assistance, 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain.
Fuel economy
Gas-only Sorentos come with a 2.5-L, four-cylinder engine. Non-turbo, FWD models are estimated by the EPA to average 24 mpg city/ 29 highway/ 26 combined. Turbo/FWD models get 22/29/25.
Turbo/AWD models, like our tester, drop to 21/28/24. In about 150 miles of mostly in-town driving, we attained 19.6 mpg. We think we would spring an extra $1,500 for the hybrid version that is EPA rated at 39/35/37. Or, we’d wait for the plug-in model, which is due in showrooms soon.
Bottom line: Beautiful Blonde and I will soon be in the market for a new car. This one will get a hard look, which means I may be in the market for a skateboard.