The Kia Borrego Is A Forgotten V8 SUV That Could Tow 7,500 Pounds

Here’s a big number: 7,500 pounds. While you might not be one to tow anything that weighs as much as two V8 BMW M3s combined, we’ve recently seen a towing lifestyle boom in America. From camper demand outstripping supply to the point that corners are frequently being cut, to a new generation coming into their boat-owning era, people are getting toys and will need to tow them. However, if you only have space for a used midsize SUV as a tow vehicle, you could find yourself in a bit of a pickle. Most won’t tow 7,500 pounds, and while Range Rovers and Porsche Cayennes meet that goal and some Mercedes-Benz MLs come close, not all of them can accept 750 pounds of tongue weight, and do you really want to deal with European luxury SUV complexity? However, there’s one cheap secondhand savior that should meet these demanding requirements. It’s the Kia Borrego, the midsize body-on-frame SUV you forgot about.

Welcome back to Beige Cars You’re Sleeping On, a weekly series in which we raise the profile of some quiet greats. We’re talking vehicles that are secretly awesome, but go unsung because of either a boring image or the lack of an image altogether.

The Borrego might not be the only body-on-frame SUV that Kia sold in America (the original Sportage says hello), but it was certainly the biggest, packing three rows of seats into 192.1 inches of 4×4. It was a big leap for a brand that still sold the Spectra, so perhaps unsurprisingly, it also featured some reasonably upscale appointments. We’re talking about heated leather seats, GPS navigation, push-to-start, power-adjustable pedals, and even a power-adjustable steering column. However, the real party piece of the Borrego was up to 7,500 pounds of towing capacity with the V8.

There’s a lot to unpack there, so let’s get at it. While most of these SUVs were equipped with a perfectly cromulent 3.8-liter V6 endowing them with 5,000 pounds of towing capacity, the 337-horsepower 4.6-liter Tau V8 cranked towing capacity up to 7,500 pounds and maximum tongue weight up to 750 pounds, pushing the Borrego beyond BMW X5 territory and into the race car-hauling echelon. Sure, it can also tow a boat, but we often think in race cars around here. Backing either engine up was a six-speed automatic transmission, and buyers could option full-time four-wheel-drive.

It was a tempting mix on paper, and reasonably competent in the real world, but the Borrego had one major demerit. See, while it was being developed, the market was shifting away from hardcore body-on-frame SUVs towards crossovers. Kia attempted to bridge the gap with some starchy suspenders, but that had a side effect eloquently described by Car And Driver.

The Borrego—the truck, not the fault—suffers its own tremors, induced by everything from large rocks to hairline pavement cracks. Kia endowed the Borrego with carlike handling, quick steering, and restrained body lean but, in doing so, stiffened the suspension to the point of distraction. Granite slabs bend (as we saw in one cut in a canyon wall where the rock layers had been deformed by  tectonic pressure into a perfect horseshoe), but the Kia’s springs do not.

However, as Car And Driver noted, the firm ride is a tradeoff for on-road handling. It produced the best skidpad and lane-change numbers in that comparison test, and once you got the Borrego out on the highway, it began to show interesting merit. As Motor Trend noted:

As assistant Web producer Scott Evans explained, “The Borrego is a perfectly capable but utterly unremarkable vehicle. It went 1000 miles with nary a hiccup and was a pleasant long-haul cruiser. The engine has good power and the SUV handles surprisingly well for its size. Every time I walked away from it, though, I completely forgot about the drive because it was entirely uninteresting.”

If you’re routinely doing huge distances, a vehicle being uninteresting is actually a huge plus. Too many rides wear out their welcome after hundreds of monotonous interstate miles, be it due to noise, subpar seats, or a driving position that just isn’t conducive to ergonomic comfort. Not the Borrego, though. It was tailor-made for American use, but it launched at precisely the wrong time.

Coming out in 2008 for the 2009 model year, the Borrego had two things going against it that had nothing to do with direct competition — stratospheric gas prices and a crippling global recession. Back in July 2008, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline hit $4.114, devastating the body-on-frame SUV market. Adjusted for inflation, that works out to $6 a gallon. Ouch. At the same time, Wall Street was going tits-up, and everyone was losing their jobs. Suddenly, the McMansion dream of a boat towed behind a big SUV was dead, and this had wide-reaching consequences.

At the same time, many mainstream automakers were gearing up for their next generation of SUVs to go unibody. Think Ford Explorer and Dodge Durango, and you’re on the right track. It all added up to disappointing sales results for the Borrego. From the launch in late 2008 to the clearout of leftover inventory in 2011, Kia only sold 22,663 Borregos in America. While that sounds like a dandy number, Toyota sold 47,878 4Runners in 2008 alone. The Borrego was simply born too slow to have a brace of body-on-frame competitors, and it vanished off the map after 2010, when Kia pulled the plug on the model in America. However, that doesn’t mean that Kia gave up on it completely, because the Borrego is still being sold in Korea. Huh?

Yes, this body-on-frame beast kept soldiering on in its home market, gradually accruing updates over the past 14 years. Sure, it may have dropped the V8 long ago, but it’s since picked up revised styling, a new interior that looks genuinely luxurious, a Lexicon sound system, and all the modern amenities imaginable from ventilated second-row seats upholstered in quilted Nappa leather to a full suite of advanced driver assistance systems. Granted, this SUV is called the Mohave in Korea, a name that wouldn’t fly in North America for obvious reasons, but if you’re in the right country, you can still walk into a Kia dealership and buy one. How about that?

These days, the Borrego represents one heck of a towing deal. Want what might be the nicest one in the country, a fully-loaded two-wheel-drive V8 Limited model with just 57,991 miles on the clock? Here it is for $9,998, up for sale at a Kia dealership in Hurst, Texas. That’s part of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, for anyone who isn’t a local.

Don’t need a concours-grade Borrego? Me neither, and that just means pricing goes down from there. Here’s a V8 Limited model up for sale in Minnesota for $7,995, and it seems pretty alright. Sure, it has nearly 130,000 miles on the clock, but it’s a V8 tow rig with a 7,500-pound towing capacity that doesn’t feature the complexity of a European luxury machine. That’s worth something on its own right there.

So, the Kia Borrego may be anonymous and have a flinty ride, but it’s also rare, shockingly capable, reasonably reliable, and properly interesting. It was simply planned and launched at the wrong time, just as everyone was transitioning to crossovers and the rug was pulled out from underneath the American people. The next time you see one of these while you’re walking down the street, open up your camera app, because who knows when you’ll see another?

(Photo credits: Kia, Autotrader seller, Craigslist seller)

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