2013 Kia Sportage: Lessons learned, and lessons left to teach

It’s hard to focus too long on the 2013 Kia Sportage.

The car before us is currently one of the best-selling compact crossovers in the U.S. right now, a four-door sales behemoth that produces only 176 horsepower in base trim. I mean, it’s not as if the Sportage speeds away like an Internet conspiracy theory with power numbers like that. Something else is afoot here.

Perhaps it’s the optional turbocharged engine. That mill, a turbo 2-liter four cranks 260 horsepower — a dramatic, almost unbelievable jump ahead from the base 2.4-liter engine. That type of gain on horsepower, a 47 percent leap, is something like hopping from the driver’s seat in a school bus to the cockpit of an F-16. But there’s something else that’s keeping me from taking in this Kia.

I can appreciate the idea behind the little Sportage. When it was introduced stateside in the 1990s, the Sportage was the epitome of someone’s idea of some crossover. The vehicular equivalent of value-buy, industrial-sized, picnic potato chips that looked like Lays, the end product of the Sportage was shaped in a familiar format, without attention to how it got there; big enough to satisfy a crowd and priced to move. From the front it could have been a Chevrolet, from the side a Suzuki, from the rear it could have been a motorcycle with large saddlebags. Or a Labrador retriever. Or a bank teller. Who knows? I appreciate those Sportages because they’re the next generation’s starter cars. And I learned how to drive on one of those.

But Kia’s corporate memory is thankfully very short. As in, there was a Kia before lead designer Peter Schreyer, and there is a very different Kia nowadays.

The Sportage thrives in that sub-$23,000 crossover sweet spot that attracts competition en masse like baby photo competitions. All fighting for those dollars are typical competitors like the Ford Escape, Honda CR-V and Toyota Rav4. Watching the Sportage compete against those cars in 2010 was like watching LeBron James at a church-ball game. There were times I wondered if the Korean carmaker would have to mine Alderaan for more raw materials to build the Sportage.

That’s because the Sportage achieved exactly what buyers were looking for in the category: a reliable crossover that wasn’t hard on gas, insurance or the eyes. It didn’t need to be a standout, just a stand-in. The Sportage is the type of car you’re looking for when other things matter than the car in your driveway.

Let me explain. The inside of the Sportage is comfortable like your couch. Likely, there are more comfortable places in your house than your couch, but you’d rather not drag your bed into your living room every time you want to watch TV. Likewise, there are plenty of pleasant, soft surfaces in the 2013 Sportage to touch, but none of it you want to line your casket with.

At this point Kia representatives would wail that I’m missing the leather-trimmed seats in top-trim SX models, or their rump-cooling or warming capabilities. What about the improved NVH, that hushes the Sportage from a moderate drone to a subtle drone at highway speeds? Or the available Bluetooth stereo, navigation or panoramic sunroof? How are those for comfort?

That’s all well and fine, I’d say, but none of those are features that will make or break buyers’ decisions to go with the Kia. Conventional wisdom is that if you’re on a Kia lot, you’re looking for value. Of which, the 2013 Kia Sportage is still a remarkable value when you consider our test car was top-of-the line and still around $32,000.

But here’s the problem with success. Everyone will duplicate yours.

The last few years have been so good to the Kia Sportage that others have taken notice. The newly launched Subaru Forester tickles the same sweet spot by starting around $22,000. A loaded Ford Escape will cost you roughly the same as a top-of-the-line Kia.

Kia does well to offer value with the 2013 Sportage, but others have caught up. That doesn’t bode ill for Kia, they’ve been known to accelerate the common 5-year lifecycle to respond to market conditions. But that does mean that Kia has entered that awkward sophomore album phase of their lifetime.

The problem isn’t that the Kia Sportage isn’t something worth focusing on, it’s just that there’s so much too look at in the segment that it’s starting to get lost in the fray.

Don’t worry. Kia’s been known to shake things up now and again.

Aaron Cole is a syndicated auto columnist. He knows he’s wrong, he’d just rather hear it from you. Reach him at aaron.m.cole@gmail.com or @ColeMeetsCars.