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I mentioned this in my full Sorento buyer’s guide and review, Monday. Kia quietly touted a 2500-kilo tow capacity for this vehicle, as early as January, and a lot of people waited a lot of months specifically for that.

Unfortunately, the WonderBra effect here proved something of a let-down, and the vehicle lost a complete cup-size, lobbing with a 2000-kilo tow limit, not the anticipated 2500. I hate it when that happens. And many of you - presumably those among you who were waiting for the metaphoric double-Ds to be unleashed - have since reached out to me, somewhat deflated.

I am reading some comments that the tow capacity is in fact going to be only 2t. Even the spec sheet on the Kia au website lists tow capacity as 2000kg. Can you confirm what the truth is? It would be a deal breaker for me as I tow a horse float that is just over 2t fully loaded. Thanks. - ptvfr80

Adding fuel to the fire of tow capacity confusion/conspiracy was this, which was mentioned a lot in comments and e-mails:

I was interested to see that in Australia the braked towing limit is 2000kg whereas in NZ and the UK the 2.2 diesel is rated at 2500kg. I rang Kia and they couldn't explain it. Maybe it does relate to different tow ball designs in the various countries as the weights otherwise seem to be the same. Shame though. I took the GT-Line for a short test drive and was very impressed. It looks great too. - Mike Langran

This of course is quite true - the Sheep-Shaggistani Kia website does list the Kiwi tow capacity at 2.5 tonnes, both in the online specs and the downloadable PDF brochure.

I’m no self-appointed Kia apologist. It’s a proper egg-on-face event for them. That disappearing 500 kilos. I’m sure they had meetings about it. I’m further sure they wished they had just shut up about this, at the outset. Because with no pre-emptive commentary, there’s no vector for public disappointment.

So I just want to lay out how this happened, and what gives - literally. And then we’ll crunch the numbers on what you can tow with a new Sorento, and how much payload you can carry when it’s at its maximum tow capacity.

Up front though, this vehicle still represents a substantial tow capacity upgrade in real terms. And it’s currently up there with equal class leaders in this category. So, it’s hardly a disgrace in those terms. Sorento is not trying to be a Pajero Sport in terms of heavy lifting.

The two tonnes carries over, but the towball download on new Sorento has increased from 100 kilos in the old model to 200 kilos on this one. And in practise this makes achieving two tonnes easier, because it can be quite difficult to limit the towball to just five per cent of aggregate trailer mass on some Aussie-spec trailers. (Typically they’re designed for 10 per cent.)

Also worth acknowledging: Mazda CX-8 and CX-9 offer 2000 kilos with 150 on the ball - but both of them have a space-saver spare, which is a comprehensive pain for towing. Kluger has a full-sized spare and 2000-kilo max tow capacity, but Toyota doesn’t list towball download in its specs.

And Santa Fe has 2000 kilos maximum, full-sized spare, so that’s good, but (out of the box) just 100 kilos on the towball. You can upgrade that to 150 if you fit the Genuine Load Assist Kit (which is a replacement set of rear springs, basically). I did that on my Santa Fe and did a 2000-kilo tow test with it.

That worked fine. It towed brilliantly, but again, you need to work hard to tweak the towball download down to achieve not more than 7.5 per cent of ATM.

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