Excessive-spec variants of the favored Kia Sportage may very well be topic to longer wait occasions on account of element shortages.
Talking with CarExpert, basic supervisor for product planning Roland Rivero mentioned the worst variant affected is the flagship GT-Line, which accounts for the majority of demand amongst personal patrons.
“The actual fact is, Kia Australia and our sellers are struggling to maintain up with Sportage demand, with numerous elements affected by provide shortages,” Mr Rivero mentioned.
“Naturally, the top-of-the-range variants with essentially the most microchips are essentially the most affected.”
Sportage GT-Line
“The availability combine coming by way of shouldn’t be supreme, in favour of the decrease trim variants. Clients are urged to sit down tight, whereas we negotiate for extra inventory.”
It seems Kia received’t comply with different producers in eradicating options to scale back element utilization; e.g. eradicating premium sound methods with a better speaker rely, or radar sensors for driver help methods.
This newest improvement comes off an excellent 12 months for the Sportage nameplate, which returned 18,792 registrations in 2022 – a year-on-year enhance of 136.4 per cent in comparison with 2021. June 2022 was additionally the primary time Kia’s mid-size SUV nameplate achieved greater than 2000 gross sales in a month, an all-time report (2044 items).
It was sufficient to see the Sportage end in fourth place in Australia’s largest new automobile gross sales phase, behind the Toyota RAV4 (34,845), Mazda CX-5 (27,062), and Mitsubishi Outlander (19,546). The Sportage additionally managed simply shy of 1000 gross sales greater than its Hyundai Tucson twin (17,870).
Sportage GT-Line
January 2023 noticed 1572 items registered in Australia, progress of 41.6 per cent on the identical month in 2022.
Kia Australia affords a complete of 11 Sportage variants throughout 4 trim ranges and three powertrains.
Pricing begins at $32,795 plus on-road prices for the entry-level Sportage S 2.0 FWD handbook and climbs to $52,720 earlier than on-roads for the costliest Sportage GT-Line 2.0D AWD.
Keep tuned to CarExpert for all the most recent.
MORE: Every little thing Kia Sportage