KGM Torres review

Introduction

Marketing experts reckon changing the name of your company works best when you have a new product to show off, so it makes sense that, when Ssangyong became KGM, it had a shiny new car to debut: the KGM Torres.

The Torres is a hybrid (HEV) family SUV that sits above the KGM Tivoli and below the KGM Rexton in the brand's line-up. You can also buy an electric version – to read about that, see our KGM Torres EVX review.

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What Car? indicative Personal lease example (subject to status)

1.5h K40 SUV 5dr Petrol Hybrid Auto Euro 6 (s/s) (176 ps)

Expected annual mileage	5000
Term months	60
Deposit months	12
Monthly payment	£396.09
Initial payment	£4,753.08

Step-by-step

Leasing works a bit like a long-term rental. You drive it, but you don’t own it.

• Choose your car, pick your terms and apply for lease credit online
• Pay monthly rental payments for your chosen term length
• Drive it, enjoy it, then give it back at the end

What you get

When you lease with Autotrader you get all of this:

• Full manufacturer’s warranty
• Road tax and roadside assistance included
• No admin fees
• Free returns within 30 days*

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£4,753 initial payment, 60 month contract, 5000 miles p/a. Subject to status and conditions.

• Lower total monthly cost than PCP/HP
• No balloon payments
• Road tax included

At 4715mm long, the Torres is a bit longer than a Kia Sportage, Volkswagen Tiguan and Volvo XC40. You could say it’s also a rival to the Skoda Kodiaq – as long as you can make do with five instead of seven seats.

There are plenty of great family SUVs to choose from, but how does the Torres rank among them? Read on to find out.

Read more: Complete the What Car? Reliability Survey now and you could win a prize

What’s new?

- June 2026: We drive the Torres Hybrid for the first time

- October 2025: The Torres goes hybrid

- January 2024: The KGM Torres is revealed with a 1.5-litre petrol engine

Overview

The KGM Torres is a spacious and relatively well-equipped family SUV, but it’ll need to do better than that to stand out in the sprawling family SUV class. The Kia Sportage, for instance, is cheaper to buy, better to drive and available with a wider variety of engines.

Pros

• Spacious interior
• Huge boot
• Great standard kit

Cons

• Poor ride
• Vague handling
• Sluggish gearbox

Trims available

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K40

The K40 trim introduces small luxuries such as leather upholstery (in place of faux leather), an electric tailgate, a 360-degree parking camera and some extra safety kit.

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Performance & drive

What it's like to drive, and how quiet it is

There’s just the one version available and it’s a hybrid (HEV), utilizing a 1.5-litre petrol engine and two electric motors. Combined, there’s 201bhp to play with and the resulting 0-62mph time is 9.0sec. It’s quick enough, but the hybrid Kia Sportage (7.9sec) is that bit more sprightly. The sluggish nature of the Torres’ automatic gearbox doesn’t exactly help matters.

As for the ride and handling, the Torres is somewhat behind the competition. On the former front, it thumps and jars over sharp-edged abrasions and fails to settle down at speed. Even on a relatively smooth motorway, you'll feel every ripple, expansion joint and surface change; the Sportage, by contrast, has a more controlled and sophisticated ride.

The fractured ride might be excusable if the Torres handled well, but that’s not the case. When you turn into a bend quickly, it leans noticeably, and it doesn’t take much speed before you’ve reached the limits of grip.

The steering is pretty vague too, so you have to make multiple steering inputs to get it round corners. Combined with suspension that gets unsettled over mid-corner bumps, what you have is a distinctly old-school-feeling SUV.

The hybrid system is perhaps the only new-school-feeling part of the driving experience, and it is pretty good at delivering power in a smooth, hushed fashion. We just wish that there was a little less wind and road noise – the Torres by no means annoyingly noisy at motorway speeds but it’s not as hushed as a Volvo XC40.

“The hybrid system marks an improvement over the old, purely petrol setup, but the rest of the driving experience still needs work in my opinion.” – Oliver Young, Reviewer

Interior

The interior layout, fit and finish

You sit reasonably high up in the KGM Torres, with a more commanding view of the road than you find in the Kia Sportage. There are eight-way electrically adjustable front seats as standard.

The Torres is easy to see out of at junctions, but the wide rear pillars hamper your over-the-shoulder view. Fortunately, front and rear parking sensors, plus a 360-degree camera, are standard across the range.

The dashboard features a 12.3in infotainment touchscreen, and there's another 12.3in driver display behind the steering wheel.

Sadly, the infotainment system isn’t great to use, with ponderous responsive times, a tricky menu layout and resolution that falls behind other family SUVs. The shortcut icons on the screen are positioned for left-hand-drive cars, so on right-hand-drive examples, they're pretty much as far from the driver as they could be.

You get Android Auto and Apple CarPlay as standard, which is useful because it allows you to run your own music and sat-nav apps through the screen. Annoyingly though, the screen switches away from the smartphone mirroring display when you adjust the climate settings (which you do on the touchscreen, rather with user-friendly physical controls).

Design-wise, the interior isn’t as rugged as the exterior. Instead, KGM has opted for a minimalist look a bit like you'll find in a Hyundai or Kia. Most of the materials are hard plastic – it’s far off matching the plushness of the Mazda CX-60 – but the finish is decent, and build quality feels good.

“I think the design is pretty smart, but there’s no denying that the interior doesn’t feel as expensive as it looks.” – Oliver Young, Reviewer

Passenger & boot space

How it copes with people and clutter

In the front of the KGM Torres you get a generous storage area under the front armrest, big door pockets, a tray for odds and ends in front of the gearlever, two USB-C outputs below the air vents and a wireless phone-charging pad on the centre console. Head and leg room is very good and there’s loads of width to avoid you clashing elbows with a front-seat passenger.

In the back, six-footers get lots of head and leg room and the interior is wide enough that three adults can sit side by side in relative comfort. There's no option of a panoramic roof, but the car's tall side windows give it a feeling of airiness. Back-seat passengers can charge their devices using two USB-C outputs located on the back of the front centre console.

It’s worth mentioning that, unlike the Skoda Kodiaq, the Torres is strictly a five seater; there’s no option of seven seats.

The back seats split 60/40 so you can fold them down for extra storage. There are no levers in the boot, so you have to open the back doors to do that, but the seat backs lie relatively flat when they're down. There's no ski-hatch option.

The boot itself is massive. At 703 litres, it puts most rivals to shame, including the Kia Sportage (591 litres) and Volvo XC40 (452 litres). You’ll have to go for the Kodiaq (910 litres) to get a bigger boot.

We just wish there were some cargo netting and lashing points; that seems an oversight considering the sheer size of the boot.

“That big boot is a key selling point. It’ll tackle a big holiday, shop or effectively whatever the family has to throw at it.” – Oliver Young, Reviewer

Buying & owning

Everyday costs, plus how reliable and safe it is

The starting price for the KGM Torres is higher than that of budget-friendly rivals such as the Dacia Duster and MG HS, and more in line with the Kia Sportage and Volvo XC40 (both of which are expected to depreciate more slowly).

However, standard equipment levels are high. There’s just the one trim, called K40, and it gets 20in alloy wheels, keyless entry and start, cruise control, heated seats, a heated steering wheel, touchscreen infotainment, an electric tailgate, a 360-degree parking camera and some extra safety kit.

Because it’s not a plug-in hybrid, the Torres makes little financial sense as a company car. You’re much better off going all in and opting for the all-electric KGM Torres EVX instead. You’ll pay much less in BIK tax.

In terms of fuel economy, the Torres officially averages 46.1mpg, which is below par for a hybrid in this class. For instance, the hybrid Kia Sportage officially averages 50mpg.

The model has not yet been safety tested by Euro NCAP but comes with automatic emergency braking (AEB), a lane-departure warning system, adaptive cruise control and a system that lets you know when the car in front of you has moved off. There’s also blind-spot detection, rear cross-traffic alert and a system that will stop you from opening your door into the path of other cars.

The Torres and KGM as a brand were both absent from our latest What Car? Reliability Survey, but if anything were to go wrong, you have a five-year, 100,000-mile warranty to fall back on. That’s longer than a lot of brands but not Kia (seven years) or Toyota (up to 10 years).

“I wasn’t able to get close to the official fuel economy figure. Mind you, the exceptionally hilly road I was on didn’t help.” – Oliver Young, Reviewer

Buy it if…

- You need a big boot

- You’d like a long warranty

- You appreciate lots of standard kit

Don’t buy it if…

- You’re looking for competitive pricing

- You want confidence-inspiring handling

- You’re after a plush ride

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