Courtesy photo
In a time when automotive design has increasingly morphed
the looks of nearly every SUV into a largely homogenous blend of smoothed
curves and squint-eyed headlamps, it’s nice to see things get weird once in a
while.
If you remember a decade ago, the market was briefly flooded
with a series of small and very strange vehicles that seemed like the kinds of
things you’d see on the highways in Japan. Oddities like the Nissan Cube and
pretty much every member of the Scion family might have disappeared, but the
super-angular and highly distinctive Kia Soul found a niche in North America —
no telling if the hamsters in the ad campaigns helped.
For its third-generation 2020 models, the Soul has received
a makeover from the ground up, taking the vehicle’s basic toaster oven/“Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”-era shuttlecraft outline and
considerably jazzing things up, so much so that it virtually becomes a
different vehicle in its various iterations.
I’ve driven the Soul’s hyper-stylized and urban showoff GT line
edition twice this year, both this summer on the Texas Gulf Coast and more
recently back on the roads of Colorado.
For those perhaps more focused on Colorado-styled adventure
lifestyle, Soul is also available in an X-Line edition, which adds body
cladding, heavier arches around its fenders, fog lights and special 18-inch
wheels to give it a more earthy look. There’s also a flashy EX Designer
Collection edition and, if you happen to live in California or Oregon, you can
also get the 111-mile-range Soul EV all-electric.
My $28,710 Soul GT-Line still had a lot of interesting stuff
going on, from its massive, roof-reaching rear brake lamps and its new,
virtually flat rear tailgate and rear profile, to a super-glossy grille that my
Texas counterparts might believe is embedded with the U of T Longhorns logo.
I can’t speak to that issue, though I can certainly attest
that it is a sharp-looking little machine that does a great job of chucking
itself along, despite its relatively diminutive size — having grown just over 2
inches to 165.2 inches overall, still 63 inches high and carrying a curb weight
of just 2,844 pounds.
While up-front comfort, head space and overall room are
adequate, I cannot say it is particularly gigantic inside for rear passengers
(rear legroom has actually decreased for 2020). A shelf-styled tonneau cover
behind the rear seats means just 18.7 cubic feet of storage, but you can drop
it and access 23.4 cubic feet, and if you flatten the rear seats and chuck out
the tonneau entirely, it will amazingly suck up more than 62 cubic feet of
cargo.
Power options include both the standard 2.0-liter
four-cylinder, mated to either a real six-speed manual or a new electronic CVT
transmission, producing 147 horsepower, or the 1.6-liter turbo four-cylinder I experienced
on both of my drives, topping out at 201 horsepower.
The turbo comes connected to a seven-speed, dual-clutch
automatic transmission that presented possibly the most problematic portion of
the new Soul’s experience. You’ll frequently feel like you’re disconnected,
even hesitating uncomfortably while trying to get it into reverse and backing
into a parking spot — blurtiness that’s enhanced by an overly intrusive
autostop feature for the tiny engine.
In pure highway travel mode, things largely smooth out, and
you can access all of that power quite easily and confidently. Ride is solid,
handling very sporty and the overall experience is fairly well-sorted for a
small vehicle.
Kia still seems to anticipate that Soul customers are
looking for something different than your average ordinary compact
quasi-crossover, and to that end, the looks and the light show inside match the
car’s style-forward exterior.
I was making a night drive home when I first noticed the
in-cabin disco mood lights flashing along in time with my soundtrack on the
Harmon Kardon stereo. I did not opt to change between modes (which include
Romance, Midnight City and the popular Hey! Yo!). Maybe this is the kind of
thing you are going to dig.
Colored inserts on the tops of the doors look like
Spider-Man’s shoulders; a flat-bottomed race wheel, kidney-shaped air vents and
a Mini Cooper-styled central pod of navigation and radio controls also added to
the charm. I also appreciated the ability to bring up three smaller displays on
the 10.25-inch navigation screen.
Andy Stonehouse’s column “Mountain Wheels” publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News. Stonehouse has worked as an editor and writer in Colorado since 1998, focusing on automotive coverage since 2004. He lives in Greeley. Contact him at rossandrewstonehouse@gmail.com.