2021 Kia Seltos AWD Turbo Crossover Review and Offroad Test

In this episode we have an all-new compact crossover from Kia, the 2021 Seltos SX AWD. Today we're going to take a look at it on the street and then also take it off-road. Will it survive? Let's find out, right now on Driving Sports TV. This is Kia's newest crossover, called the Seltos. It has a rugged, modern design and a long list of features that should appeal to buyers who consider Instagram an aspirational occupation. The Seltos competes squarely with the Nissan Rogue Sport and the Subaru Crosstrek. The model we're testing today is the top-of-the-line SX Turbo AWD. Prices you see it here with optional floor mats and paint is $29,485 including destination. If you take a look at Kia's marketing of the Seltos, you will see a site full of imagery that shows the little crossover just enjoying its best outdoor life. Imagine, as an influencer, how cool you would look with your Seltos out in the wild. That's the aspiration. But can you achieve it? We'll attempt to hit up our favorite trailhead later in this video, just like Kia shows in its ads. But first, let's dig into the features to see what Kia has loaded into this little beast. Under the hood is a 1.6 liter turbocharged four-banger. This produces up to 175 horsepower and 195 pound-feet of torque. It's connected to a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, and it powers all four wheels through Magna Powertrain's Dynamax all-wheel drive system. EPA rates this setup at 25 miles to the gallon in the city and 30 on the highway. This system does use a center transfer clutch to predictably distribute up to half of the available power to the back wheels. Further, it uses brake vectoring to reduce wheel spin from the open differentials, which can bleed power in low-grip situations. Individual wheel brakes stop a wheel from spinning, which causes torque to redistribute back into the system and to the other wheels. Keep this in mind for when we hit the trail later in this video. The rear cargo area features up to 26.6 cubic feet of storage behind the second row. Under the floor is a spare and a jack kit. Pull out the privacy cover and fold down the split second row for up to 62.8 cubic feet of total storage. In terms of capacity, this is pretty much equal to the front-wheel drive version of the Nissan Rogue Sport. However, it is superior to both the all-wheel drive Rogue Sport as well as the Subaru Crosstrek. I fit just fine in the second row. I am 6'1 and have extra space for my head and legs. A single USB power socket is provided at this trim level, and passengers get a fold-down armrest with cup holders. Up front, Kia has doubled down on their current design language. Everything is dark, with glossy bits throughout. This being an SX, it does come with high-quality faux leather. Other features in this SX include push-button start, seat warmers, single-zone aircon with an auto setting, and a magnificent 10.2-inch widescreen display integrated into the dash. The main cluster has a 7-inch digital display in the center to provide various data points about the vehicle, in addition to safety system status. And in terms of safety, this SX is pretty well loaded with lane keep assist, blind spot warnings, collision assist with pedestrian detection, and a lot more. You can configure all the settings in the main display. Our test car also has LED headlights, and a nice rear-view camera with dynamic guides and rear cross-traffic alerts. I really like the current version of the Kia infotainment system. It's nicely configurable, with everything from interior color control on this SX, to loading up the Bose catalog of atmospheric sounds, which you might remember we covered in the Hyundai Sonata Hybrid review just recently. The stereo is pretty cool, with satellite XM radio allowing you to pause and rewind live streams, which can be handy. Navigation is only available on this top trim Seltos SX, and it is a nice setup, with quick searches through a touchscreen keyboard interface. But since all trims get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration, built-in navigation just isn't as necessary as it used to be. Navigate to the nearest Starbucks. The closest one I found is Starbucks on 120th Avenue Northeast in Kirkland. The SX Turbo includes three drive modes, normal, smart, and sport. These adjust steering feel and throttle response. Let's see how these also affect the all-wheel drive system. First, we'll try the normal setting. Slip is minimal, as expected. Next, there's sport. You can see some spin in the front, and even more back-wheel power than we normally see. Now, sport, with the all-wheel drive lock button engaged. And, as advertised, that appears to be roughly equal wheel spin out of the gate. So far, this Seltos is looking to be quite an impressive soft-roader. Let's head into the mountains to see just how far into the wilds it can take us. On the way out there, we can take a look at some of the more everyday driving features. and 60. Yeah, that's pretty quick. Again, it's a little 1.6-liter motor with a turbo. It does take a little while to get going, but once it does, it's pretty spunky. Let's look at the adaptive cruise control system. I'm going to go ahead and hit cruise. I'm going to go ahead and hit set. Set my distance. I have four levels. Let's do as tight as possible. We'll set my cruise speed to 70, and then what I can do is I can hit this little steering wheel here, and now it'll lane trace once it detects the center of the lane. Once everything is green, I can take my hands off the wheel, and it'll actually steer around this corner, but stay dead center on the lane. So, your next question is probably, how long will it do semi-autonomous driving for? Let's find out. I'm going to go take my hands off in the corner here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, ten seconds, which is perfectly reasonable. Again, it's not supposed to replace driving. It is merely an assist system. Power, yeah, 60 to 80 run is pretty pokey. Again, it's down to the size of the motor. It's only a 1.6 liter. 195 horsepower is fun around town, but once you're actually on the open road, it can be a little bit sluggish. Man, I can't get over how loud this is on the freeway. I mean, it's a combination of, you know, the tires, the big wheels, and I'm getting some wind noise up here, like buffeting. The seven-speed transmission, it does shift rather abruptly, and it can be confused. When you catch it off guard, it takes a moment to get recomposed, which isn't my favorite thing. It's a little herky-jerky. It's the downside of a dual-clutch setup, but the benefit is that you get a real direct feel. When you accelerate, you're getting the minimum amount of parasitic loss. You know, with a hydramatic style or with a CVT, you lose a lot of the power in the drivetrain. With a DCT, it's a lot more efficient. It's much more like a manual transmission in that regard. There's no paddle shifters, but I can shift down here if I like. Let's see, four, three, yeah, and it shifts really quickly. Bam, bam. The suspension's on the tight side, and of course, this does have large wheels, which kind of helps with the overall stiff feel and the cornering stiffness as well. But it's very sporty, very sporty indeed. If you want a sporty small hatchback, this is a fantastic choice. But today, we're going to see how well it does in the mountains. Now, going to the mountains isn't just about the mountains. It's about how the all-wheel drive system reacts and behaves, and what we learn here also can be just as easily applied to, say, a snowy road. Oh, yeah, okay, okay. Suspension's a little stiff for this, but when it's smooth, oh yeah. I mean, you feel the front bias of it, but it really pushes a lot of power to the back, which is great. This vehicle obviously was not intended for off-roading. I mean, let's just look at it. It has 18-inch wheels, 7.3 inches of ground clearance, a really kind of high-strung little 1.6-liter turbo engine. This really isn't what this was intended for, but still, I'm kind of curious. Here's the first little bit of rocks. Now, this is much simpler than the upper section, so it's kind of a nice warm-up. Let's see what the system does. Of course, there's no underbody protection. It's telling me there's this, whoa, these rocks are slippery. That DCT transmission's not having much fun. Okay, I smell clutch. Okay, of course, it started to rain a little bit, so that means that the course is going to be a little slipperier than usual. We'll see how this goes. Okay, so let's look at setup here. There's really nothing to set up. We're just going to keep drive mode into smart and the transmission in standard drive. This is a dual clutch, so there is a possibility of overheating. We'll try to avoid that, and I will stop a couple times to really stress the all-wheel drive system. Normally, it's momentum that'll get you through, so if we have any issues, I'll use momentum, but at first, I'm going to try to just let the all-wheel drive system do all the work. Okay, let's do this. Now, the Seltos here uses a, oh, oh, there's one thing we can do. There is a center clutch lock. I'm going to go ahead and lock that, which means that all-wheel drive is evenly split as best as it can. This is based on Magna's all-wheel drive system, and it does have a clutch pack in the middle that helps distribute power from the front to the back. And then on top of that, it uses brake vectoring to redistribute power back into the system. Now, this is telling me that there's a steep grade press brake pedal. Of course, if I do that, I stop. Basically, it's telling me it doesn't like what I'm doing, so I'm just going to keep on going, and this camera here will just have an annoying error message the whole time. So, this is where we're going to lift up a couple wheels and see how power is redistributed. Okay, so these two wheels are spinning, and it'll be interesting to see what's going on on the outside. Is there any wheel braking, or are they just spinning freely? Now, we're supposed to just keep it throttled in. Oh, didn't like that. I think we'll have to use a little momentum. Oh, and the transmission is already warning me that it's about to overheat. Nice. Oh, and I can smell it. Transmission temp is high. Stop. Okay, we only made it up 50 feet, and it's already overheating. So, I'm going to go ahead and stop here. I'm going to let the transmission cool down before we continue on. Yeah, I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to go as quickly as I can to maintain momentum just to get to the top, and hopefully we don't overheat anymore. Man, this is killing me. Come on. One more peg under the danger zone. There we go. We're out of the danger zone. Let's hopefully we can get up. Let's see how we do here. Maintain momentum. Keep it moving. Stay to the left. Try not to grind the bottom. Okay, that's how you do that. Do not. Oh, and I've gone up two more pegs. I'm already back into the danger zone. Wow. Okay, well, we'll get this to the top. We'll turn around, and I think this is as much as this system will take, which is unfortunate. Oh, man. I was really hoping this would do better. Let's turn around and head it back. Okay, now, luckily, we don't need to use the transmission on the downhill. It's just basically coasting, but we do have something to assist us, and that is hill descent control. I'm going to go ahead and click that on. They call it downhill brake control. Now, let's see how fast this is. Oh, this is pretty good. Some of these systems go just way too fast. This is actually pretty reasonable, which is funny, because this is a vehicle that has a decent downhill descent speed, yet it can't make it up the same hill with its own power. Not good. Not good at all. So, that's my look at the 2021 Kia Seltos. It's fun and awesome and great on the street. Do not take it off-roading. It is not it just does not do well with it. Be sure to subscribe. Check us out on Instagram. We're DrivingSportsTV, all one word. And we got another great video next week, so be sure to subscribe, leave a comment. We'll see you again. Oh, boy.