Kia Sportage SUV (2010-2014) - Reliability & safety
An excellent seven-year warranty shows Kia has a lot of faith in the Sportage’s reliability. The car has a very good safety rating, too
The Kia Sportage offers a seven-year/100,000 mile warranty that’s longer than any of its rivals. That alone will be enough to tempt many buyers.
Kia Sportage reliability
Our Driver Power 2014 customer satisfaction survey saw the Kia Sportage drop 23 places from the previous year to finish 72nd out of 150 cars. Despite this drop, the car still scored well in areas such as reliability and practicality, but it was marked down for poor performance and not being a lot of fun to drive.
Even so, owners are generally a satisfied bunch, with more than half of Carbuyer owner review writers saying they’d recommend a Sportage to their friend and awarding it four stars on average.
Good news comes in the form of the manufacturers’ side of the Driver Power survey, where Kia came seventh out of 33 brands. And, if that isn’t enough to reassure you, don’t forget that all Kias come with a seven-year/100,000 mile warranty that covers the replacement or repair of many of the car's parts should they go wrong.
Safety
Safety is another strong point for the Sportage and the Kia received a five-star rating when it was crash-tested by Euro NCAP. The experts were impressed, but the Mazda CX-5 and Ford Kuga both scored a few per cent more overall. All three performed better than the Nissan Qashqai in most categories.
All Sportages get a healthy list of safety features, including front, side and curtain airbags, ISOFIX child-seat mounts, anti-lock brakes, electronic stability control, hill-hold and anti-whiplash headrests. Kia doesn’t discriminate when it comes to safety equipment, so buyers of the cheapest models enjoy the kit as those buying top-of-the-range models.
