We drove the FHEV 230, felt.. adequate for the size. Wasn’t as impressive as 230hp would suggest, but didn’t feel like a moving road block either.
It’s miles above the Tucson in regards to the interior imho, but one thing they have in common: oodles and oodles of piano black shiny plastic, which i personally despise. It looks cheap, it looks greasy within 3 minutes of sitting in the car, it just is nasty and for the life of me i don’t understand why manufacturers choose it over just somewhat nicely textured (sandblasted) plastic.
Considering the Tucson being almost £6k already, i’d assume the Sportage will sit above that – especially because that it, in top spec, has more kit than the Tucson too. The Tucson in top spec does not have the blind view monitor (dials changing to cameras showing the blind spot when indicating), nor the “remote auto park” (moving the car forwards and backwards with the key) as standard, but as part of a £1500 optional tech package. Both of those things are gimmicky (the blind view monitor might have use, but i found it distracting more than anything – might change when you get used to it), but will add to the price.
The gear selector makes shuffling the car around also more tedious than it needs to be (rotary dial thing), just feels unnatural – but again, might change if you get used to it, we only had around 2 hours with the car.
Turning radius, btw, is reasonable. It’s not much bigger than in our Ateca, but it’s 30cm longer so that would be expected. Sadly that also means that we couldn’t get it onto our parking space in one swing, had to three point it in.