The Kia Sportage Inside and Out

Kia Motors America has a lot riding on the 2017 Sportage. (As do other Kia companies in various other countries around the world, as the Sportage is a global vehicle, and while it might be considered a compact crossover in the U.S. market, the vehicle is just the right size pretty much everywhere else.)

This version is the fourth generation of the vehicle. It is the longest-running name plate for Kia in the U.S. market. And while it isn’t the biggest-selling vehicle in Kia’s lineup, in the first quarter of this year its sales are up 50 percent compared to the same period in 2015, and there is no other vehicle in the Kia lineup with such a gain.

The compact crossover segment is hot, and so the Sportage is essential for the company.

To find out about this all-new vehicle, which is bigger inside and out, which has a much stiffer structure than the previous model due to a proliferation of advanced high strength steels, and which has a spirited Euro-style appearance (which can be explained by the facts that (1) it was designed in the Kia Frankfurt design studio and (2) it was designed under the direction of Peter Schreyer, who is himself German), we have Orth Hedrick, Kia Motors America vice president of Product Planning, join us in the studio for this edition of “Autoline After Hours.”

Also on set are two top Detroit-based automotive analysts, Stephanie Brinley of IHS Automotive and Dave Sullivan of AutoPacific.

Brinley, Sullivan and I also talk about some recent developments, like the Faraday Future groundbreaking for a $1-billion plant for electric vehicles in North Las Vegas, the 42 mpg highway that the new Chevy Cruze is rated at and whether that will have an effect on the sales of its kin the Volt and the Malibu, and whether it is going to be game on between Cadillac and Lincoln in terms of sales in the U.S. market as the sales of the former are presently lagging while those of the latter are strengthening.

And there’s more, which you can see here: