Kia Soul

The Kia Soul is a solid sedan designed and manufactured by Kia Motors in South Korea, the renowned Japanese auto manufacturer. The sedan was designed in the Californian design center of Kia by Mike Torpey, a member of the Kia’s design team, and the Kia Soul was unveiled at the 2008 Paris Motor Show, in Paris in 2008.

Kia introduced the first generation Soul in 2009 and it was available in the market up to 2013.

The designed concept of Kia Soul was sent to KIA in Korea to suggest a new automobile. Attracted by a TV documentary on untamed boars, Mike Torpey, the designer of Kia Soul, drafted a picture of a boar and, for realism, put a rucksack on it. This concept stimulated the mixture of a slanting roof line with a general rectangular form of the Kia Soul.

Peter Schreyer, previously the Audi TT’s designer and the designer of other sedans at Volkswagen, joined the KIA Automotive Group as the latest Corporate Design Chief of KIA, and appended some touches to the innovative Soul Concept for the forthcoming Auto Show, inserting the Soul Concepts nose his current Signature corporate grille of Kia, referred to as the Tiger Nose.

In accordance with the Automotive News, the Kia Soul has been condemned for a plastic interior and an insensitive ride. Both the interior and the ride quality were tackled by KIA and improved during the first years manufacture.

Shortly after the release of Kia Soul, Kia introduced a sequence of commercial vehicles as a part of their campaign. The advertisements, created by David&Goliath, an advertisement agency in Los Angeles, features a mixture of movement-captured and costumed hamsters on motionless Hamster wheels on city roads, which are subsequently all passed through cooler hamsters traveling in the Kia Soul. The commercial models of Kia Soul have attracted a sect following and have gushed in fame on video-sharing websites, such as YouTube. The commercial models were honored with the "Automotive Ad of the Year" award at the Nielsen Automotive Advertising Awards.

The design of the second generation and the current Kia Soul was derived from the Track'ster idea. It integrated 28.7 % boost in torsional firmness over the earlier vehicle, with a longer wheelbase of 101 inches (2,570 mm), overall breadth that is widened to 71 inches (1,800 mm) and the similar overall height of 63.0 inches (1,600 mm), high-mounted tail lights, wraparound greenhouse, and large trapezoidal lower air intake. The second generation Kia Soul was unveiled at the Auto Show in New York in 2013, followed by the 2013 Motor Show in Frankfurt in 2013.

The United States model of Kia Soul went on sale as the model year vehicle for the year 2014. Previous models of Kia Soul include an option of 2.0 Nu MPI or 1.6 Gamma GDI engines, six-paced manual or six-speed mechanical transmission. The 2014 Kia Soul was introduced in three variants, such as Base Soul, Soul Exclaim, and Soul Plus.

The second and current generation KIA Soul employs the similar underpinnings as the second era Cee'd hatchback of KIA. Thus, the chassis of the Kia Soul is currently 29 % firmer than that of the earlier model. Besides the chassis, the body of the Kia Soul has endured strengthening, as well, using ultra high power steel that makes the current Soul 66 % firmer over the outgoing model.