An SUV That Was Once Among The Ugliest In The World, Is Now A Range Rover Lookalike

Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis are the best-known of South Korea’s car companies, but they’re not the only ones. One of the lesser-known Korean automakers, due in part to it never having reached the US market, is KGM Ssangyong, formerly just known as Ssangyong. The company did achieve some notoriety beyond the markets it operated in, but not for reasons it would like. Put generously, it made some really weird-looking vehicles.

It had a small off-roader called Korondo that began as a clone of the Jeep CJ. It then became a vehicle that looked like a Wrangler that had all its corners sanded off, and eventually became a relatively generic small crossover. It also built something called the Rodius, which looked somewhat normal at the front, but the rear looked a bit like two cars stacked on top of each other. Both of them can be seen in the link below. That brings us to the Actyon, which at one point had a strange nose with a pointy hood that protruded over the front bumper. The company is working hard on becoming more conventional, and potentially better selling. Case in point is this new Actyon, which, at least in Australia, doesn’t even bear the Ssangyong name anymore, switching over the KGM branding.

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From Jeep Looks To Range Rover Looks

The Acyton has also been sold under the Torres name, doesn’t look anything like its early predecessors. Truthfully, it now looks a little generic, but leaning toward Range Rover. The slim grille and headlights and hunkered-down roof particularly remind us of the little Range Rover Evoque. Though in its previous guise, it actually had a grille with vertical slots that looked very Jeep-like. Of course, considering Ssangyong’s connnection with Jeep, that actually makes some sense. The inside doesn’t look much like a Range Rover, and it seems a bit more its own, if not especially unique. It’s a relatively minimalist cabin with instruments and infotainment on a big monolith of displays in front of the driver. There’s also a healthy amount of ambient lighting.

Not Much Under The Hood

The Actyon shows that it’s meant to be more of an economical compact crossover than the Range Rover it resembles with its powertrain. It’s powered by a turbocharged 1.5-liter four-cylinder, and it makes 161 horsepower and 207 pound-feet of torque. That power goes through a six-speed automatic transmission. The suggested price in Australia is $47,000, which currently comes to about $30,275 in the US. We don’t expect to see Ssangyong to enter the US market under any name, anytime soon, though, so you’ll need to go oversees if you want one.