Kia’s sharply-stylish new segment-busting Soul is set to win over minds as well as hearts at the Paris Salon de l’Automobile in October with confirmation that the urban crossover will come to Europe next year with a choice of fuel-efficient petrol and diesel engines.

Soul is a five-door hatchback with front-wheel drive, a high roofline and an unusually long wheelbase. The key elements behind Soul’s striking appearance are its vertical measurements. Overall height is 1,610 mm but the base of the windscreen is 135 mm higher than a typical compact car, the hip-points are 120 mm higher and the ground clearance is raised by 45 mm.

Access to the new Kia Soul’s spacious interior is remarkably easy and the cabin will deliver head, leg and shoulder room that matches or beats many larger vehicles. Generous headroom (1020/1005 mm front/rear), legroom (1070/990 mm front/rear) and shoulder room (1403/1400 mm front/rear) will ensure Soul can easily adapt to the changing demands of its owner when pressed into giving friends or family a lift!

Kia Soul will go on sale in mainland Europe next February with a choice 126 ps diesel and petrol engines based on the DOHC engines already fitted to the hugely successful, European-built, Kia cee’d – with a choice of manual or automatic transmissions, depending on model. Right-hand drive production is due to start in March.

The diesel engine generates 126 ps at 4,000 rpm and maximum torque of 255 Nm at 2,000 rpm, while the all-aluminium petrol engine also produces 126 ps at 6,300 rpm and 156 Nm of torque at 4,200 rpm.

(more…)

This morning has been full of surprises. First, I received a speculation image of the Kia VG sedan into my mail-box, and now, while searching for some Kia news, I found these three images that seem to be official Kia Soul shots. They reveal some exciting parts of the Soul’s interior we have not seen yet.

Starting with second image, you can see a nicely designed, dual tone center stack, painted in a striking red-black combination. It houses an audio unit in the center and three large HVAC knobs below. Pictured above radio unit, is the pop-up cover that might be hiding a navigation display, but most probably there is an empty place to store the sunglasses. Atop the center stack, there is a large speaker located to maximize audio performance. (see here).

Speaking of audio speakers, let’s move to the front door of the Kia Soul. There are LEDs positioned behind the speaker grille that pulse to the beat of the music. Perhaps you noticed this feature on a mat-black Burner concept, but finding it on production Soul model, this is quite a surprise. This feature will be offered as an optional extra.

Moving to the third image, you can see the front seat with black upholstery and white-brown Soul pattern on it.

Looking at the images we have seen here lately it turned out that Soul is going to be an exciting vehicle with lots of possibilities for extensive customisation afterall. We can state that Kia has a winner on it’s hands as this is one of the coolest vehicles after Mini and Fiat500 hit the strrets! [Source: Autojoins] Find more about Kia Soul here.

After we have shown you an exciting rendering that previewed the next generation Kia Sorento, we can now spice things up a little bit again by showing you the artist rendering sketch of the upcoming near-luxury 2010 Kia VG sedan.

The fancy speculative drawing surfaced to the web today and previews the possible production shape of the 2010 Kia VG sedan that we have been commonly seeing in the last few weeks. Future Kia VG sedan has been spotted testing in Death Valley (USA) and South Korea for several times and there are many great spy shots and videos of it.

Currently sitting atop Kia’s US lineup is the Amanti sedan but it is believed that this car will eventually replace the Amanti when it goes on sale in the second half of 2009. Early spy reports suggest that VG’s mechanical base, as well as it’s engines, will be shared with next generation Hyundai Azera. Therefore you can expect to see the updated, direct-injection, 3,8L Lambda V6 engine fitted under the hood of the near-luxury VG sedan. [Source: Bobaedream]
(more…)

While I was looking for some more shots of the Soul Burner that I showed you in the previous post, I came across these, even greater shots, where you can see two range topping Souls, a Tomato-Red and Clear-White painted cars.

The exterior of the Soul looks impressive and unique, but what’s even more exciting is the interior, which seems to be really well laid out and quality built. The leather-wrapped steering-wheel seems light years ahead compared to steering-wheels we have used to see in Kias and the center dash looks absolutely beautiful. It has a very clean design and seems to be made of higher quality plastic materials.

Hit the jump to see more images… (more…)

Here we have an image of the final version of the Kia Soul. Wanilla-Shake Soul model features some interesting body parts that were first applied to the Burner concept vehicle and were rumoured to find it’s way into production.

H-grille: The H-grille with horizontal bars and a chrome squeeze above and below the Kia badge was first implemented to the midsize sedan Lotze (Optima) sedan and most recently, to Kia Forte. The signature grille is slowly spreading throughout the whole Kia lineup and is expected to become standard element at all future Kia cars.   

Burner type alloy-wheels:
Soul is expected to have a variety of different alloy-wheels. This particular model wears 18-inch tires with 5-spoke alloy’s reminiscent of Soul Burner concept alloy-wheels. These alloys look the same as the one we have seen in the commercial Kia released last week to announce the Soul will soon be launched. In the video, random wheels were bouncing around until the same wheel as seen here came into the scene.

Front, rear skirt, side sills:
A close up look at the Soul reveals the styling body kit will also be available among accessories. There are black skirts fitted to the front and rear bumpers, as well as on the side. See more images here.

(more…)

British motorists looking for excellent quality coupled with good value are keeping Kia Motors (UK) Ltd., at the top of the brand’s European sales league.

With the cee’d family setting new records in the retail sales sector and demand for Picanto outstripping supply, plus strong growth for Rio the Weybridge-based company remains the best-performing operation under the Kia Motors Europe umbrella both in July and in the year to date.

During July the company delivered vehicle sales of 2,316 – according to KME reporting rules – comfortably ahead of Spain, Germany, Italy and France. And that meant the UK subsidiary kept its crown for the year to date with total sales in the seven months of 20,550 – almost 3,000 units ahead of Germany and even more ahead of Spain, Italy and France. (more…)