Written by Luke Wilkinson Updated: 29 January 2025

Steve ‘Percy’ Lawman, Parkers product maestro and master of fuel economy has taken on the reigns of KGM’s new ‘Actyon’ SUV. Stick with us as we put it through an extended 6-month loan to see how it copes in a real-world dose of British roads.

Report by: Percy Lawman – Last Updated August 26th 2025

Update 1: Welcome, equipment and options
Update 2: Driving impressions

Update 1: Welcome, equipment and options

KGM is the new brand name for what was Ssangyong. In the past, the South Korean company was probably best known for some fairly mediocre offerings in the guise of the ‘Korando’ and ‘Rexton’ [amongst others] which had a particular agricultural feel to them. In early 2024, everything changed and the old Ssangyong name was consigned to the history books. Enter the new 2024 ranges and in particular from 2025, the Actyon or ‘Action’ as KGM’s press pack proudly flags up. It’s the firm’s new entry into a highly competitive SUV market under the KGM flag and with some pretty heavyweight opposition, this won’t be any push over to the already established players such as VWs Tiguan, the Nissan Qashqai and the Kia Sportage.

We’ll look to put the new Actyon through its paces in everyday ownership during a UK summer and into the wintertime to see if there’s any possible glimpse this outsider has of denting the current mainstream offerings.

Our test car is brand spanking new. It’s not often we get a test vehicle that has only 14 miles on the clock. Inside, everything is very pristine and mint as you’d expect. The delivery from the press office was flawless and the preparation of the car couldn’t be faulted. Inside, everything was still wrapped in protective plastic including the floor mats. A brand-new owner’s manual and AV manual was a nice thought, often missing from many ‘test’ cars we have in. Given the mileage, we weren’t even sure that it had been driven here as I wasn’t around when the drop-off occurred. More likely it was delivered on a low-loader.

Our car [RF25 PZL] is the 1.5 K50 5-door auto. Unfortunately, this is the only derivative in the range so prospective buyers have no choice in engines, gearboxes or specific trim levels. In a way, you’re stuck with this but at least we can put across our observations relating to the actual car. You won’t get any ‘we haven’t driven this variant ’ here! Owners do however have a choice of five colours and a couple of factory options.

KGM say the car is a Coupe-SUV. Jumbling up and combining body style names seem to be the ‘in thing’ these days. My own thoughts are that it’s probably more in the region of 80% SUV and 20% Coupe.

From the exterior, the car looks very smart in the summer sun. Standard vehicles are spec’d with ‘Standard White’ paintwork, but our own car is finished in ‘Space Black’
[+£750] which is about as black as you’ll get being a rich dark metallic. Other available colours are Iron Silver, Forest Green and Dandy Blue [all at a +£750 premium] – very dandy then!

A walk around the car reveals an older ‘Range Rover’ esque shape to the rear end with the lines being more angular than its smooth rivals. Premium Michelin Primacy Tour 245/45 R20 rubber is fitted as standard to the mammoth 20-inch diamond cut alloy wheels which are standard fit and look super smart.

What first becomes a talking point is how big the car looks. From the outside it looks somewhat larger than its rivals being 4740mm in length compared to 4515mm for the Sportage. It’s also wider at 1910mm compared to 1865mm for the same car.

Inside, the car offers a superb amount of storage. With 668 litres [seats up] and 1568 with the seats flat, this dwarfs the Sportage at 562 litres and smashes the Qashqai at only 479 litres. So, if space and storage is your number one concern and priority, then the Actyon should be near the top of the list.

Where the Actyon shines is the very extensive equipment list as KGM has excelled in offering owners stacks of standard fit equipment at no additional cost. You can expect the following:

• 360-degree Camera
• Fully Digital 12.3-inch Screen
• Premium Suede Interior – Heating & Cooling Seats
• Noise Cancelling Michelin Tyres
• Hexagon Steering Wheel
• Front & Rear Parking Sensors
• Built-In Sat Nav + Android Auto & Apple CarPlay
• Adaptive Cruise Control
• 20” Diamond Cut Alloy Wheels
• Power Tailgate With ‘Kick’ Operation

Additionally, our own car is also fitted with a manual towbar which is a £539.69 option. This is a welcome addition and useful for towing loads of up 1500kg [braked towing weight] so could handle a good medium size caravan.

At the time of publication, the OTR [On the road] manufacturer price is *£38,649 and you can fully configure your new car online here at KGM’s UK site.

As mentioned earlier, under the hood is a single power unit option. The 1.5 litre GDI petrol turbo engine is a pure Euro 6 ‘ICE’ offering with no hybrids, plug-in hybrids or electrics in sight. The 4 cylinder, 6-speed auto box engine produces 163ps with a maximum torque of 280nm between 1500 and 4000 rpm. It’s a FWD [front wheel drive] unit and isn’t a 4x4 as such with no 4-wheel drive option. We wouldn’t be recommending this as an ‘off-roader’, but it’s got enough ground clearance for high kerbs and the like. 0-62mph is 10.8 seconds and the top speed maxes out at 119mph.

Potential owners would be looking at quite a high annual VED rate as the CO2 emissions are high for such a low-capacity engine. With a CO2 output of 194g/km, you’d be looking at an annual VED rate of £195. Insurance group rating is 25A.

Unfortunately, the high CO2 emissions come with a sting in the tail. New cars sold in the UK now come with a ‘first year’ VED [Road Tax] rate which is based around the emissions of the car. With 194g/km, this adds a very hefty £3300 to the first-year ownership cost.

KGM also offer a 5-year/100,000 miles warranty. A special subscription-based service plan at £35.00/month is also available as an optional extra through the franchised dealer network.

One point that has been mentioned already on the initial evaluations done by the road test team, is the poor MPG returned. ‘Lead Foot Luke’ [Wilkinson] only manged around the 20mpg mark which falls very short of KGM’s own advertised figure of 33mpg combined.

Given this, Percy who’s got an excellent track record on returning class-leading MPG figures, may well have his work cut out this time round.

Stay with us over the coming weeks as we get under the skin of KGMs new 2025 Actyon.
* Price correct at time of original publication [22/8/2025]

Update 2: Driving impressions

We’d normally hold back with the driving impressions until later in the review, but since I’ve already managed some extensive out-and-about real-world driving and we could have a red-flag scenario on the mpg, we’ll get these in first as potential owners may well be interested to see what has happened.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve done the normal round-town shopping trips and school drop offs plus nipping into the office with a 30-mile round-trip commute every now and again. These runs have been a mixture of ‘A’ and ‘B’ roads, plus a handful of minor cross-country roads. The first impression is that out on the open road, the car has very little road noise. The cabin is a very quiet place to be, soaking up plenty of the external road noise. Interesting also that the Michelin Primacy tyres are touted as ‘Noise Cancelling’ in the PR release, presumably by using some form of acoustic technology to help out. It’s a term more widely used in electronics especially within microphone technology.

The engine itself feels quite refined and quiet but isn’t helped by the rather ‘woolly’ response of the auto gearbox which can take some time to make its mind up and can be undecisive at times.

There’s also a slight delay between pushing on the accelerator and the car moving off so worth thinking about as ‘nipping’ in and out of traffic won’t really be on the cards. Don’t expect earth-shattering response times when making a move off the line as more often than not, the front wheels will spin up fairly easily.

One neat feature is that you can assign various functions to the ‘Favourite’ button on the bottom left of the steering wheel. I found that having the ‘Drive-mode’ assigned to this one-push button [which gives either Normal, Sport or Winter mode] gave you instant control rather than you having to navigate through the various menus.

On minor and ‘B’ roads, the car had a tendency to pitch somewhat into the corners even when not being pushed too aggressively. The suspension seemed firm but bouncy, especially when the road turned uneven and bumpy which happened frequently. Bumps were not absorbed particularly well and increasing the speed on an uneven road just made matters worse. The car frequently didn’t seem that happy and going into a fast corner on an uneven road unsettled the car to some degree. In our opinion, the suspension setup was not very well suited to these types of UK roads and requires further work and development.

On the flip side, on faster ‘A’ roads with fewer bumps, the car felt much better. The smoother road surface suited the car well and as a ‘fast road’ option, the suspension coped a lot better. With cruising speeds between 60 and 70mph the car was in good shape as the suspension was not really being worked that much out its quite narrow comfort zone.

The opportunity then arose to do a trip from Peterborough to North Wales. My daughter lives in Beddgelert, Caernarfon – in the heart of Snowdonia. A trip here would normally be a 4 to 5 hour run on the A14/M6/M54/A5 and then a mountain ‘A’ road depending on traffic. It’s a real mix of faster dual-carriageway and motorway roads with a good stint of winding wilderness ‘A’ roads thrown in for good measure.

We chose to travel on an August Friday afternoon which on the face of it would be a big mistake, but it wasn’t to be. Traffic can be an issue especially during holiday periods, but we had a good run on the A14 and then onto the M6; preferring to pay the extra £10.50 on the M6 toll which then circumvented some congestion around Birmingham and ‘Spaghetti Junction’. This alone saved about 40 minutes – so worth it on the day.

The Actyon handled the faster and smoother roads with ease with very little road noise. Travelling on into North Wales the M54 mellowed into the A5 and by the time we’d reached Llangollen, the road wound around the base of the surrounding higher ground.

Onto Betws-y-Coed and the A5 had a very wide mix of slower winding curves and the odd faster straight section. As before, we found the car was quite happy when the road surface was not so challenging. Throw in some uneven surfaces and the complaints would start.

My wife [who’s partly disabled] has been quite critical of SUVs in the past, commenting frequently about how uncomfortable some are; however, the Actyon got a glowing report.

She mentioned how nice and plush the interior was, specifically the dark red seat-belt trim and surrounding stitching. Both driver and passenger enjoy electronically adjustable front seats which are also fully heated and air conditioned – so the best of both worlds. She wasn’t too concerned about the ‘unruly’ handling as such, going on to say that I was probably driving too fast. Sorry to report though, that wasn’t the case [honest!]

From Betws-y-Coed, we continued on the A5, turning off onto the A4086 at Capel Curig. We then took the A498 which is a very scenic route across the Eastern part of Snowdonia. Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) is over to the right and you pass two lakes ‘Llyn Gwynant’ and ‘’Llyn Dinas’ further down. The later having a great view from the road a few miles before Beddgelert with a couple of pull-ins for excellent viewing. This road is quite fast after leaving Capel Curig before going narrower and more winding as it nears Beddgelert village.

Owners need to be aware that the Actyon is pretty wide. At 1910mm, it’s wider than most other SUV’s in the class so once the road begins to narrow, you have to be on your toes.

Whilst out and about, we took the opportunity to ascend a single-track minor road in order to take the obligatory on-site photos. These roads are not for the faint hearted and to be honest, I think we would have been in some trouble had another vehicle been coming in the other direction.

So, onto the one of the main points of contention. As mentioned earlier, our road tester only managed around 20mpg in the first initial tests. This was the same story when looking at some [but not all] reviews from other publications. My job here was to evaluate the fuel consumption. Was it really that bad?

20mpg equates to 4.399 miles per litre and says you need a KC-135 tanker on hand. The Actyon has a 50-litre tank. This means the car will travel on average about 220 miles based on these figures. Not looking good.

During the first 3 weeks of ownership, I had covered about 680 miles of mainly mixed A, B and minor road journeys – locally, semi-locally with no fast motorways or dual carriageways, filling the tank twice. This looked as if I was achieving around 340 miles to a tank just using the car on a day-by-day basis. This is substantially better than the reported 220.

I decided to use the North Wales trip as the benchmark and an MPG test – so with the drive mode set to ‘Normal’, here’s what I can summarise from my experience.

In the pursuance of science and getting to the bottom of all this, I brimmed the Actyon. It must be noted that when filling the car, the fuel electronic cut-off [fitted at most refuelling pumps] frequently cut in when the car thought it was full. I managed to squeeze in a few *extra litres – effectively brimming the tank. I took a 5-litre refill can as I wanted to empty the tank totally and didn’t want to be calling out the recovery people.

I took a reading whilst 100% full [1282 miles] and without going into too much detail, I managed eke out 483 miles before the car spluttered to a stop [on a backroad as planned and out of the way of other traffic] – being 100% empty.

We wouldn’t normally run a car totally ‘dry’ but needed to know for sure we’d used the whole tank and therefore achieved maximum range. In the real world, this means I averaged about 9.66 miles per litre. That translated to 43.915 mpg which exceeds the manufacturers claimed WLTP figures.

Here’s the figures and rundown:

• The car holds a max of 50 litres [10.99 gallons] – call it 11.00 gallons
• KGM’s official fuel economy is 33mpg combined = 7.259 miles per litre
• When brimmed, the mileage read 1282 miles
• When 100% empty, the mileage read 1765 miles
• Total range was 483 miles running the tank from 100% full to 100% empty

Our test car had 2 adults [68kg and 85kg] on board with one medium case which was full [12kg]. We also had a 23kg folding mobility scooter in the boot.

On the trip, I averaged between 60 and 70mph [normally sitting around the 65mph mark] cruising on motorways and dual carriageways. The A5 and other ‘A’ roads were variable depending on traffic and road conditions but generally between 40 and 60mph.

*We should potentially factor in that ‘brimming’ the car filled the ‘tank’ – plus put extra fuel in the downpipe which may hold probably 3 or so extra litres [+/-]. Take 3 litres off the figures [-27 miles] and we’re still getting 456 miles [9.12 mpl or 41.46mpg average]. KGM’s [High] economy figure is 38.mpg.

Real-world driving summary and opinion.
I think the Actyon makes a very good long-distance cruiser/tourer suited to smoother roads. In the right hands, it will at least equal and in some instances exceed the manufacturers claimed MPG figures.

The car is happier out on the open road on dual carriageways and the like. The constant stop/start in normal day-by-day driving conditions does however make a significant difference in fuel economy. It has heaps of space for both passengers and enough room in the boot for plenty of luggage exceeding the space offered by rivals. Where the car falls down somewhat is when you have to start negotiating roads that are far from what we’d class as in an ‘ideal reasonable condition’ or just plain bumpy old back roads. Once on a road that should have been repaired 20 years ago, then the suspension will begin to complain and sometimes quite badly.

Report by Percy Lawman – updated 26th August 2025