The 2016 Kia Sportage has been spotted out in the wild, just hours after Kia teased the world with three design sketch images of what it might look like. The Sportage is due to be unveiled in a month’s time at this year’s Frankfurt motor show, but for now we’ve got two new photos of the vehicle, sans camouflage.
From the photos, we can see that the 2016 Sportage appears to look a little softer and rounder – and more of an evolutionary design, rather than revolutionary. A newly released photo hows the front of the new Sportage wearing Kia’s ‘tiger nose’ grille and signature “ice cube” fog lights. To me it kind of looks like Kia’s take on the Porsche Macan.
The sketch images also showed us the cabin borrows some design cues from the new Carnival, Sorento and Optima models.
If history is anything to go by, the new Sportage will be based on the same underpinnings as Hyundai’s new Tucson, though we can expect some handing and ride differences thanks to Kia’s localised suspension tuning program.
For now we’ll either have to wait for new spy photos to emerge, otherwise we’ll see the new Sportage in the flesh in Frankfurt next month.