byGrace Buchan/22 June 2026/inKia News

Kia Sportage Wins Best SUV for Towing Caravans

The Kia Sportage has long been one of New Zealand’s favourite SUVs, combining everyday practicality with advanced technology, hybrid efficiency and impressive capability. Whether it’s towing a small caravan, heading away for a family holiday or tackling weekend adventures, the Sportage is designed to handle it all with confidence.

Now, the Sportage has added another accolade to its growing list of achievements. At the 2026 What Car? Tow Car Awards in the UK, the Sportage Hybrid was named the Best Car for Caravans up to 1500kg, recognised for its outstanding towing ability, stability and everyday usability.

Discover why the Kia Sportage continues to set the benchmark for medium SUVs and why it’s proving to be an ideal choice for drivers who need versatility without compromise.

Kia Sportage named ‘Best car for caravans up to 1500kg’
Sportage HEV ‘GT-Line S’ AWD combines a 1,510kg towing capacity with family-friendly practicality and 6.4L/100km combined fuel economy
The award adds to Sportage’s strong 2026 performance, with more than 21,000 UK sales year-to-date
The Kia Sportage has been named ‘Best car for caravans up to 1500kg’ in the annual What Car? Tow Car Awards.

Press release by Kia UK

Pulling its weight: Kia Sportage tops category at What Car? Tow Car Awards 2026

For the 20th year, What Car? has joined forces with the Camping and Caravanning Club to find, appraise and celebrate Britain’s best cars for towing, testing all cars from small hatchbacks to seven-seat SUVs. The Kia Sportage, which sits in the heavily populated compact-SUV segment, fended off competition to take home a hard-fought category win, adding to its overflowing trophy cabinet.

The testing process combines controlled towing assessments with everyday usability checks to identify the best all-round tow cars. Each vehicle is paired with a Swift caravan loaded to either 85% of the car’s kerb weight, or its maximum towing capacity, and then put through a series of expert-led tests at Horiba-MIRA proving ground. Tests include high-speed stability runs, slalom handling, hill starts, reversing, lane changes, emergency braking and acceleration. Test scores are then balanced with assessments of practicality, safety, value, running costs and standard equipment, ensuring the winning cars excel not only while towing, but in day-to-day driving too.

The vehicle highlighted by What Car? and the Camping and Caravanning Club was the Kia Sportage HEV ‘GT-Line S’ in all-wheel drive (AWD), the variant which crowns the Sportage HEV line-up. With a maximum braked trailer weight of 1,510kg, five seats, and 587 litres of luggage compartment space with all seats in place, the Sportage HEV suits a wide variety of lifestyles with families very much at the heart of its ethos.

Moreover, the 1.6-litre petrol hybrid powertrain delivers combined fuel consumption of 6.4L/100km, proving that efficiency doesn’t come at the expense of towing capability.

Steve Huntingford, Editor at What Car?, commented: “Freshly updated with a new look, better tech and more power, the Kia Sportage takes top spot in this class. Whatever quality you value most in a tow car, the Sportage delivers. The Kia is very secure at high speeds and in an emergency swerve. Even in blustery conditions, car and caravan tracked straight and true.”

This award for Sportage follows previous successes at the What Car? Tow Car Awards, with the largest of Kia’s EV family, the EV9, topping the ‘Electric Car (1,201kg+ towing capacity)’ category last year. In preceding years, the largest of Kia’s petrol-powered cars, the Sorento, has also found multiple successes.