Car: SsangYong Kyron 4x4 range
Prices: £14,995-£22,495 - on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 12-13
Emissions: 197-217g/km
Performance: [4WD] Max Speed 104mph / 0-60mph 16.2s
Fuel Consumption: [4WD] (Urban) 28.5mpg / (extra urban) 44.8mpg / (Combined) 36.7mpg
Safety: Active rollover protection, hill descent control, ABS with ABD brake assist
Dimensions: Length/Width/Heightmm 4460/1880/1740mm
KY ME A RIVER
Our Rating: 6.6 / 10
SsangYong hope their Kyron will make a splash in the compact 4x4 market. It’s a tough Task, as Andy Enright reports
As many manufacturers have found, stretching your brand too far up or downmarket can often have catastrophic consequences. Management textbooks espouse the need to stick with what you know best. SsangYong have developed a reputation for offering large but inexpensive 4x4s, often with unconventional styling. Extending their corporate expertise into the compact 4x4 market seems only logical, but their first crack at this sector, the Kyron, finds itself in probably the most cut-throat arena of all.
As any motoring expert will tell you, small 4x4s and MPV style vehicles are hot tickets in terms of sales and all of the big fish have cottoned onto this fact, directing some serious research and development budget at the task of being top of the compact 4x4 pile. This is why the prospective buyer is faced with a wide range of frankly excellent cars to choose from. The big Japanese manufacturers like Nissan with their X-TRAIL, Honda with the CR-V and Toyota with the RAV4 all present stiff opposition to any manufacturer looking to establish a foothold. Land Rover and Jeep still own the upper sector of this market and Hyundai, Suzuki and Kia have pretty much mapped out the lower range. Is there room for SsangYong?
The importers of the Kyron like to think so. SsangYong plans to export 37,000 Kyrons a year, many of them headed for Europe where the company is on track for a massive sales boost to 40,000 sales a year. With sales of the Rexton slow and the Rodius almost non-existent, the Kyron is the car that has the responsibility of keeping SsangYong’s head above water in Europe. The company are not in the rudest of health at the moment, their Chinese owners overseeing something of a sales collapse that the Kyron must turn round. Many industry observers place the blame on the styling direction the company has taken, and although the Kyron is a far more socially acceptable shape than, say, the Rodius, it’s still not what you’d call compact 4x4-generic.
Prices start from £14,995 for the entry-level 2-wheel drive model, then there are S, EX and SPR specification 4-wheel drive variants priced from £16,995. All models feature alloy wheels, electric windows and mirrors, air-conditioning, a CD player, an alarm and ABS with ABD (Automatic Brakeforce Distribution), plus the ESP (Electronic Stability Programme) and HDC (Hill Descent Control) on plusher variants. Power for all versions comes from a 2.0-litre turbo diesel common rail unit developing 141PS and 310NM of torque from 1.800rpm. Sixty is 16.2s away from rest on the way to a top speed of 104mph (in the 4WD versions at least), so you won’t be buying this car is performance is your top priority. It’s reasonably economical though, recording 36.7mpg on the combined cycle. There’s a decent braked towing capacity too of 2,300kg. Automatic Kyron models feature a Mercedes-Benz five-speed T-Tronic transmission which offers a manual mode "with the responsiveness of a stick shift", plus two reverse gears to give better traction in ice or snow.
Designed by Ken Greenley, SsangYong Motor Company’s British creative director and former head of Automotive Design at the Royal College of Art, the Kyron is well proportioned, albeit with a couple of rather unconventional details. The rear lights take a little getting used to. Just as most manufacturers have decided that high mounted tail lights are the way forward, SsangYong seems intent on bucking this trend, the Kyron’s tail lights hanging down below the car’s belt line in a shield-shaped cluster. The front grille sits above the apex of the headlamps, giving the front end a curiously snouty look and from the side, the nose is a lot more tapered than the bluff fronts of most 4x4s. One has to admire SsangYong for refusing to follow the herd but as cars like the Fiat Multipla have shown, adventurous design doesn’t always result in big sales. The Kyron looks great in profile with a wedgy waistline that’s a whole lot sportier than the av