• Big for the money
• No clever seating tricks
• Useful two-level boot floor standard

How much space is there?

Rather a lot, at least for what you’re paying. Despite costing less than some small SUVs, the Korando is longer than a Nissan Qashqai. All occupants benefit from lots of headroom, and legroom is generous, too.

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Four six-foot adults could go on a long journey quite comfortably, with plenty of foot space for those in the back and a transmission tunnel that isn’t too intrusive. Central rear occupants get a flat seat that’s preferable to the domed benches you get in some rivals, and width is far better than a similarly priced Ford Puma, Skoda Kamiq or other similar sized small SUV.

Boot space

The Korando’s 551-litre boot looks impressive on paper, but open up the tailgateand you might be surprised at how shallow the space actually is. That’s mainly due to the adjustable boot floor – lower it or remove it, and you’ll liberate a far more useful space. The floor can also be positioned upright and used as a boot divider – useful for preventing smaller items from rolling around.

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However, with the boot floor in its lowest position there’s a large load sill to lift items over, and when the rear seats are lowered there’s a large hump in the load floor. The rear seats also aren’t especially clever – doing without the sliding, reclining or individual folding that you get in a Skoda Karoq. You don’t even get a load-through facility for the rear bench which folds in a 60/40 split.

Safety

Euro NCAP tested the Korando when it was still known as a Ssangyong way back in 2019. It gained an impressive five-star safety rating with good, if not outstanding safety ratings across the board. However, the test has become harder over the years for both crash protection and the safety assist systems, so it’s impossible to compare the scores directly with a modern test.

Where once it looked like you got plenty of advanced safety kit, things have moved on. You get lane-departure warning and lane-keeping assist, traffic sign recognition, a driver attention alert, autonomous emergency braking and six airbags. It’s not a bad roster, but rivals can offer adaptive cruise and better semi-autonomous driving functionality.

You get two Isofix child seat fixings on the outer rear seats, although you can disable the front passenger airbag as well. The Isofix mounts are clearly marked, but don’t have any plastic guide, so can be a pain to clip onto.