Kia Sorento to take on X5?

Kia is benchmarking prestige BMW to get a head-start on the handling dynamics of the next-generation Sorento

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The Power to Surprise... Kia's catch-cry run true this week when the company's National Marketing Manager, Steve Watt, revealed that the company is benchmarking BMW's X5 in local suspension tuning work for next generation Sorento.

"We've started prep work for [the] next Sorrento," said Watt and this week's Rio three-door and sedan launch. "We benchmarked an X5 BMW."

Kia's local chassis tuning consulting engineer, Graeme Gambold, on hand at the launch said the next generation Sorento will "...almost certainly have [advancements] in progressive damping," which though unlikely to include adjustable dampers is nonetheless expected to deliver improved on-road ride handling.

Kia is planning to releases a subtly facelifted version of the current Sorento SUV in August this year. It's not this car that will benefit from the X5 benchmarking. "A few years away," the all-new next generation Sorento SUV will, however – and the benchmarking is a clear indication that Kia is setting itself lofty targets.

In a technical briefing detailing Kia's methodology when tailoring the ride and handling characteristics of its various cars for the Australia market, Watt explained that "substantial" changes were now made to all Kia models.

"We need to match the dynamic ability of the car to the [road and environmental] condition. We want to reduce the intervention of ESP," he stated.

Watt said that Korea now accepts that different global markets want unique suspension tunes and though he admits that Australian tuning can only go so far (the core engineering cannot be changed, only tweaked, if you will) the work carried out on Queensland, New South Welsh and Victorian roads can influence the head office engineers.

Gambold explained that Korean drivers desire a different level of ride quality and handling response to Australians. Country and B-road handling performance was important to the Australian driver he stated, adding that locally tuned cars needed to be able to handle well at higher speeds.

"[Korean drivers] want it zippy at 30km/h, we want it zippy at 100km/h."