Used Kia in Rome, Georgia

The company that built Kias in 2005 and the company building them now have very little in common. Peter Schreyer, who had run Audi design through the nineties and Volkswagen's after that, went to Kia in 2006 and gave the whole range one recognizable face, and within a few years people were choosing a Kia because they liked how it looked rather than because it was the cheap option. The used market has been slow to update its opinion.

That lag is the opportunity. A Sorento or a Sportage of a given age usually asks less than the equivalent from a brand with a longer reputation, and the gap is reputation rather than engineering. The clear exception is the Telluride, which was received well enough and quickly enough that resale corrected for it almost immediately. The bargain you find on a Sorento is not sitting there on a Telluride.

One thing follows from a design-led brand. Kia trims can look nearly identical from the outside while differing a great deal in what is actually fitted, so two vehicles that photograph the same are not necessarily the same vehicle. The wheels and the grille say less about a given Kia than the equipment list does.