I have looked at and driven a number of sub compact and compact SUV/Crossovers. I have mostly owned Ford products over the last thirty years for daily/appliance duty. Have owned other brands for the fun factor. I recently looked at a Kia Sportage which seems to tick all the boxes for our needs. Reviews I have read are pretty kind to the Sportage other then gas mileage. Anyone have fist hand knowledge of the Sportage or Kia's in general.
Umm.... you must be new here. :D
Are you looking at new? used? if used what year range? Kia (and Hyundai both) make some great products.
I'm looking at a very low mileage 2017 Kia Sportage EX
In reply to pirate :
yeah, great platform. Great cars. They still suffer a little from the Korean resale value hit so there are some really good deals on almost new ones. My inlaws have the Sorento (2015) that they now have 110k miles on and love it. We've had plenty of Hyundais and Kias in the family as well.
We have a 2011 Kia Sorento, bought at 30k, now at 105k, has been very good to us. One a/c hose and one abs sensor/ hub needed in the time.
The hub may have been affected by hitting a cooler on the highway.
The sportage is a bit smaller but depending on year has same engine has sorento to push less weight around.
Good, reliable, solid cars.
Bobzilla is the guru on them.
The front diff is an excellent place to source a 4.78 gearset for your RX-7 or NA2/NB or Honda S2000. The pumpkin is a straight bolt-in for an '84-85 RX-7, same driveshaft flange and axle splines.
The rear diff is a weird 7.5" rearend that might be a good upgrade for Miatas except that the ring and pinion is not the weak point of the Mazda 7" so it's kind of pointless.
The engine is a Korean copy of the Mazda "FE" engine, basically a DOHC 2 liter version of the F2. Supposedly it runs like a 5/4 scale DOHC B6 engine and has a stronger bottom end than an SR20DET. What all this TLA means is that it's a cool engine for swapping into a highly overboosted Probe or somesuch.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
The true GRM answer to this question. 
In reply to bgkast (Forum Supporter) :
Haha whenever I see kia sportage I'm like "rwd f2t?"
Let's all be clear that the OP's prospective 2017 Sportage is a very, very different animal from the one Pete's talking about.
In reply to Stealthtercel :
D'oh! I somehow read "first gen knowledge" instead of "first hand knowledge".
(litella) Never mind (/litella)
Pete. (l33t FS) said:The front diff is an excellent place to source a 4.78 gearset for your RX-7 or NA2/NB or Honda S2000. The pumpkin is a straight bolt-in for an '84-85 RX-7, same driveshaft flange and axle splines.
The rear diff is a weird 7.5" rearend that might be a good upgrade for Miatas except that the ring and pinion is not the weak point of the Mazda 7" so it's kind of pointless.
The engine is a Korean copy of the Mazda "FE" engine, basically a DOHC 2 liter version of the F2. Supposedly it runs like a 5/4 scale DOHC B6 engine and has a stronger bottom end than an SR20DET. What all this TLA means is that it's a cool engine for swapping into a highly overboosted Probe or somesuch.
Did they have a 3.55 or any other options? No E36 M3. I need to regear my miata.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :
Do you have the "big" miata diff? From 1.8s I think.
If I remember correctly (and seems to mesh with pete's post), that same ring and pinion can be found in the early rx7s amongst many other things. There are lots of gear ratios available.
Well, after some quick searches, it would seem that really that diff is only common in higher ratios (3.9/4.1/higher).
There was a 3.6 miata though, the nb8b? Whatever that means...
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