Monday, May 31, 2010

Hey SOUL sister!


"like no other KIA we seen before!"

Another car maker with its eyes set on the so-called "urban on-roader" market. KIA first previewed its challenger at the Geneva Motor Show two years ago (2008) by revealing the SOUL concept car. Look past the glitzy concept detailing because what we have here is a very attractive little runabout with "chunky" styling and a spacious, versatile interior. When the real thing debut this year in the Philippines the response was "Hey what was that oddly good looking thing running around?!"hahaha.


Soul's inside theme is high-end audio components, so the dashboard is arranged around speaker placement rather than vice versa. With this emphasis on interior styling its clear Kia knows its target market, Generation Y (77'-94'). Additionally the souls power lift gate has an integrated configurable backpack compartment that can hold variable items in variable sizes and shapes. Now that's good news for people who bring their closets with them.


Highlighted safety perimeters of the chunky includes detailed information on everything from fuel mileage to seating capacity. Another class on this class is the traction control and the anti-skid system just like Mazda's CX series! And of course the curtain side airbags. The rest are all safety standards. Soul is a front wheel drive powered by a 1.6L 4-cylinder engine that teams with a speed manual transmission and 2.0L variant for both 5speed manual and 4speed automatic transmission. And just what you wanted to know, YES a diesel engine variant is available.


Personally the Soul's funky factor seems more superficial than the quirky-to-the-bone Nissan Cube, and this likeable little box deserves serious consideration in the class. And FYI to those planning to drive this odd looking thing you might want to hold your belts a couple of months more because an insider tipped me that the price will be down a couple of hundreds to three from its market price now. You can do the math I suppose!





3 comments:

Shake Signe said...

wow! I luv the fact that a diesel engine is available for this baby... a curtain side aribags s something new to look out for with this model... i've seen one of these so far... nyahaha! personally, the external looks weird but it's got a really cool interior...

Anonymous said...

hmmmmm the diesel version is not, and will not be available for a while in our market and there are no curtain airbags even for the high end model for the soul here.

- carl cabusas- former motoring journalist for The Freeman

Unknown said...

thanks for the info sir. but that was the initial statement of KIA salesman that a diesel engine will be made available soon. nonetheless what he said is a fiction until we see one running around right!? ;)