You drive by. You realize you haven't seen him for simply ages and here he is - no longer a cute kid but looking grown up and capable. Maybe he went off to prep school.

And so it is with the Kia Sportage. Absent from the market for three years it is back with a new persona. And like the kid up the block, its act seems stitched together. But then that is increasingly typical of Korean vehicles - quality and reliability way up, design values stronger.

Kia is the Korean car company you can actually pronounce, the one with the clever ads. Nearly half of the company is now owned by Hyundai, which no American can pronounce though rhyming it with Sunday comes close enough.

Because of their financial union the two can now share hardware and ideas, probably more willingly than sisters who wear the same size can share clothes. But each, according to company officials, will maintain distinct identities and a full line of products.

An immediate outcome of the relationship is the new Sportage bearing a resemblance in size and layout to the Hyundai Tucson. But then the Sportage is better. Well, at least I like it better. It seems more spirited, more light-hearted, better looking (though neither is more than not-bad in that department) and it is just generally more appealing. But all of those traits are subjective. Check them with your own meters.

Objectively the new Sportage is a well-built five-place compact SUV offering an impressive array of standard features in even its base-base model. For its return to market it is now a car-based (unibody) instead of a truck based (body-on-frame), which means it is more a street and highway vehicle than an off-road mountain goat. (There's no low-low gear either.)

The word "crossover" is sometimes used to describe such car-based SUVs intended to shine more in bad weather and on bad roads than in the backcountry. And why not? Fewer than 5% to 15% of SUV owners ever actually take their SUVs off-roading.

This Sportage is no longer the cute-ute it once was. (Prep school does that.) But it is more useful in its young-adult size with handy folding seats (even the passenger seat flops forward) and tucking places that not only allow you to tote a lot of stuff but to do the task in an organized manner.

And two things about those back seats (with their 60/40 split and their ample leg room): when folded flat they lock in place. And when upright they don't have to be upright. That's right, the backs recline up to 18%. Stop by the club, James.

The Sportage comes in two trim levels called LX and EX, but some optional mixing makes for close customization. And every Sportage at any level comes out of the factory with the following included: side-impact air bags; side-curtain airbags; traction control; stability control; four-wheel ABS (anti-lock brakes) with electronic distribution of the braking force on four-wheel disc brakes; cruise control; privacy glass; roof rack; 16-inch alloy wheels. Notice I did not say air-conditioning. No A/C? Whattha? …Just hold your horses.

Kia offers an LX model for $16,490, thousands less than the starting price of its perceived competitors (Toyota RAV4, Ford Escape, Jeep Liberty, Honda CR-V). A $16,490 Sportage comes with the splendid equipment listed above and a 2-liter 4-cylinder engine, front-wheel drive and a five-speed manual transmission. But no A/C.

(CONTINUED...)