With the fleet car market being the only slice of the new car market with a reasonable amount of buying cash flowing around in it, it’s probably no surprise that Kia have aimed their new cee’d Sportswagon (SW) squarely at the this market. Estate cars are also getting more fashionable these days. And this cee’d SW looks pretty good.

So, with fleet-cash in mind and with the new cee’d SW expected to outsell the hatchback variant in this market segment, all of the new cee’d SWs will be sold as diesels. Kia believes that with the fleet market so dominant, buyers will be wanting diesel power up front, with ‘their high torque outputs and low operating and running costs, they are ideally suited to the heavy loads and high mileages often inflicted on estate cars by business operators’. Indeed, and private customers will also be interested in some big economy figures.

The entry-level, 89bhp 1.4-litre CRDi engine in the new cee’d SW makes 220Nm of torque from just 1500rpm, while the 126bhp 1.6-litre CRDi ups the torque output to 260Nm from 1900rpm. All gearboxes, including the automatic that’s paired to the 1.6-litre engine, are 6-speeders, while the manual gearbox cee’ds are fitted with Kia’s Intelligent Stop & Go engine stop/start system to cut the engine automatically when it’s not needed.

As a result, the 1.4-litre cee’d Sportswagon is capable of 67.3mpg and has CO2 emissions hitting as little as 109g/km, which means a Benefit-in-Kind tax level of 15 per cent. The manual 1.6-litre versions, with CO2 emissions of 116g/km, fall into the 17 per cent BIK band, and come almost as close on the fuel-sipping side of things, with an official combined economy rating of 64.2mpg.

The new Kia cee’d Sportswagon range starts at £16,895 and rises to £24,795, and they’re in the dealers now.

By Daniel Anslow

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