A cursory, and sometimes scary (given the price of new cars), glance across automotive segments provides a revelatory snapshot of buying trends in the South African passenger vehicle market.
The key take-outs are that nearly two-thirds of new vehicle sales now originate from compact and medium-sized SUVs, within which manual transmission equipped models are continually losing their appeal, making petrol automatics almost the default choice.
And what of diesels? There are a handful of options at the R300k-R400k entry point, a similar number between R700k-R900k, and a raft of seven-digit price picks thereafter. Between R500k and R700k, though, where what's left of the country's economically active middle-class is being forced to shop, there is not a single one.
Enter Kia, which trotted out a petrol version of the fifth-generation Sportage in September 2022 (incidentally, a contender for the 2023 South African Car of the Year), but has finally got around to adding a trio of oil-burning derivatives to the incumbent five-strong petrol line-up. These are the LX, EX and GT-Line Plus selling for R597 995, R651 995 and R735 995 respectively. In a welcome (and deliberate?) attempt at differentiation from its DNA-donating doppelgänger Hyundai, the Sportage does not feature the same 2-litre 137kW/416Nm turbo-diesel engine as the Tucson.
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