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By Jonathan Crouch

KGM's Torres mid-sized SUV makes quite a statement. Jonathan Crouch drives it.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 38

A fresh brand, KGM Motors, needs a fresh design approach and this KGM Torres very much offers that. A tough, versatile, five-seat upper-mid-sized SUV, it comes in combustion, Hybrid and EV forms and offers something quite appealingly different.

Backgroundword count: 194

With all the new brands flooding our market these days, you may have forgotten - or perhaps still not quite have caught up with - the fact that the Korean marque that used to be called SsangYong is these days marketing itself under the name KGM Motors. That change happened back in 2024 two years after SsangYong's buy-out by huge South Korean chemical and steel company the KG group. And KGM's headline car for its UK launch was this car, the KGM Torres. The Torres (named after the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile) was important for this newly-named brand because all the other models it was selling from 2024 onwards were merely re-badged SsangYongs. The Torres though, was completely new, the first of a fresh raft of designs we'll see from the marque using a lot of borrowed technology from Chinese maker BYD. To begin with, there was a choice of an old-school conventional petrol model or a full-electric variant, the Torres EVX. In late 2025 though, the Hybrid version we'll be looking at here was added to the line-up, which is the car most potential Torres customers are likely to want.

Driving Experienceword count: 340

To suit the mood of the moment, there's the choice of the two kinds of powertrain that a well informed customer for a mid-sized family SUV will be looking for - full-Hybrid or full-EV. The petrol/electric engineering here is quite complex, though unusually for a Hybrid powertrain sourced (as this one is) from BYD, you can't plug it in. As with the old petrol Torres, the engine is 1.5-litres in size turbo petrol engine, but here it produces slightly more power (177PS) thanks to the addition of two electric motors and a six-speed e-DHT automatic gearbox. Towers who liked the original Torres petrol model might be attracted by the 300Nm torque figure (30Nm up on that old car) but they shouldn't be because compared to that old un-electrified variant, braked towing capacity has fallen 200kg to 1.3-tonnes and, more seriously, there's now no longer a 4x4 drivetrain option - in any Torres. Still, there's otherwise lots to like about this Hybrid unit. The powertrain has no fewer than nine different driving modes able to alter it for differing scenarios. Unless you're in the engine-only setting that preserves charge in the battery, most of your driving in town will be done without the aid of combustion power. In fact, KGM claims that the Torres Hybrid can do 95% of its city driving on battery power alone and all-electric driving in EV mode is possible at speeds of up to 62mph. 0-62mph takes 10.8s en route to 109mph. And there's a paddleshift-activated three-setting regenerative braking set-up to recharge the batteries as you drive. Which most of the time will be in the HEV mode that combines both electric and petrol driving. If you're not really interested in petrol driving and like the idea of a Torres, then KGM hopes you'll want the all-electric EVX version. Despite the Jeep-style rugged looks, it only comes with a single motor front-driven powertrain. This uses a 201bhp electric motor energised by a 73.4kWh battery, which when fully charged is apparently good for up to 287 miles.

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