Editors of Edmunds Inside Line were invited to South Korea where Kia Motors held an official event to introduce it’s latest product to American automotive media. At the event, they drove the 142-hp Kia Soul and now, they put together an interesting review with their first impressions.
All in all, the review is good read and although it doesn’t reveal anything spectacular about the Soul, it does provide two facts that are new to me. First, it says the Soul is available with two different suspension set-ups, a regular, which provides more comfortable ride and a sportier one, which is optional:
Like the Rio, the Soul features a MacPherson strut front suspension. Out back, you’ll find a simple torsion beam axle that’s mounted on a subframe to reduce the harshness of the inputs transmitted into the cabin. Equipped with the optional Sport package, the Soul gains a suitably sport-tuned suspension, though the details of the latter are unclear. Nevertheless, our drive of the sporting Soul uncovered a car that lives up to the sort of firm, European-style ride quality toward which Kia is trying to move all its vehicles.
And second, it mentions something we have discussed here long time ago and refers to Kia’s decision of using an “outdated” four-speed automatic transmission in the car:
Kia admits a four-speed automatic is a little behind the times (even if the Scion xB features the same), but it’s working toward a six-speed automatic to be employed in all its cars in the near future…Read more
Well, it’s good to know Kia realizes the same and we have high hopes the company will soon react and replace it with another, more modern automatic transmission, which will provide even smoother drive, improved performance and enhanced fuel economy.
As you know, the official U.S. launch will be taking place on Nov, 21 at the L.A. auto show, where Kia also intends to display it’s fourth generation Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle based on Borrego SUV.
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November 17th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
we saw this article, right?
November 17th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
True, someone mentioned about it last week, but I thought it would be good to have it here. Well, at least some of the most interesting facts that were mentioned in the review.
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So what do you think of six-speed transmission in the Soul? It could come with the facelift…
November 18th, 2008 at 12:32 am
do you know WHEN the 6 speed OR a facelift is scheduled? i wish it came NOW with a 5 or 6 auto but i’ll take what i can get. i still love the car. its great.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:43 am
The line in the Edmonds arlicle that made me laugh was the comment about the lack of color of their motor vehicles in Korea, greyscale I think he said. Well you ought to see the cars in Japan, their favorite color is white, white and white and most of those are Toyotas. A few years back, I worked and lived in Japan, working and being trained for Mitsubishi at the Okazaki Plant in the city of Okazaki, which is just South of Nagoya. I have never seen so many white cars. If you worked for Mitsubishi, they would only let the cars they produced into the employee car park. If you owned a Honda or Toyota, heaven forbid, you had to park outside the plant, usually quiet some distance away from the front gate, a bit of incentive I guess. Anyway the funny thing was, sometimes I got a ride back into town to the hotel I was staying at and we’d walk out to the carpark and there were hundreds of the Mitsubishis of similar models and 95% were white in color, and of course he couldn’t find his car. So lets have some color…..well someone did say once, “any color, as long as its black”.
November 18th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Great story, OzyTone! Man, the Japanese carmakers aren’t very competitive with each other, are they? Well, I am really happy with my 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS. It’s a gorgeous, car, needs a bath right now, though! Arizona is dusty on cars. Unfortunately it happens about a day after the car gets washed, it gets dusty again.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
im not liking the suspension spec so far. torsion beam suspensions usually mean a cruddy ride quality – subframe or no subframe… do not want.