The 2021 Kia Sorento, a large-medium sized SUV, bowed today and a lot of the look is clearly cribbed from the successful full-sized Kia Telluride. It totally works, too. I’d count on seeing quite a few of these on American roads soon.

Kia is calling this fourth-gen Sorento a “compact SUV” but it’s a three-row vehicle that’s supposed to rival vehicles like the Toyota Highlander and Honda Pilot for family utility.

The most obvious changes for 2021 are cosmetic, the vehicle’s much pointier and a little meaner-looking than the current Sorento but generally I’d call this car handsome. Kia is promising ride quality and rigidity improvements over the current Sorento with terms like “average tensile strength is improved by 4 percent,” and “body-in-white weight reduced by 5.6 percent.” That do anything for you? Me neither, but I’m sure it will be nothing less than decent to drive and ride in.

did not use the term “ground clearance”) plus all-wheel drive with a center locking differential for traction and and downhill descent control.

Kia’s objective with that was probably to pull some people who might have also been looking at Honda Passports and Subarus. But the Korean car company is actually casting a pretty wide net with the new Sorento, as it’s clearly trying to differentiate between trim levels pretty aggressively. Besides the tough one, there’s also a shiny one and a hybrid.

directly.

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Anyway I think it is clear that this is a decent-looking SUV and will probably sell in droves if Kia can keep the price reasonable. Should be a good rival against some of the other popular mediumish sized family transport vehicles I mentioned earlier in this post.