First Drive Review
The Honda Element is history, Toyota blew it when it overinflated its second Scion xB, and the screwy Nissan Cube was never in the game. The 21st-century “box car” wars have effectively ended, and it’s the Kia Soul that has emerged victorious. The new, second-generation 2014 version of the Soul is here to dance on the rubble.
What Kia hasn’t done with this new Soul is mess up the formula that made the first one so successful. At first glance, the 2014 Soul is hardly any different from the old one. It’s still a bolt upright, four-door milk carton with a snub nose; wheels that are pushed to the four corners; a greenhouse that seems to slope down toward the back of the car; and tall taillights mounted high on either end of the flat tail. The lower portion is now more aggressively sculpted, the taillights are better integrated and shine with LED incandescence, and there’s more shoulder to the fenders, but this Soul is immediately identifiable as the offspring of the first one.
Among all that sameness, there are some hints in the latest Soul’s appearance of the hot two-door Track’ster concept Kia showed at the 2012 Chicago auto show. Still, Kia could have pushed it further. A two-door variation seems like a natural brand extension should the company ever decide to risk it. And the Track’ster had all-wheel drive and a 250-hp, 2.0-liter turbocharged engine. (While we’re at it, let’s ask for a convertible version like the 2009 Soul’ster concept.)
At second glance, not that much has changed mechanically, either. The Soul is still a straightforward front-driver built on the same basic structure that underpins the Rio. The wheelbase has been stretched by 0.8 inch to a still tidy 101.2 inches (the same as the Rio five-door), width has expanded by 0.6 inch to 70.9, and the height has plummeted a terrifying 0.4 inch to 63 flat. Yes, the new Soul is 1.4 inches longer than the first-generation model, but it still only stretches to 163.0 inches, a scant four or so more than the Rio hatch.
The front struts and the rear torsion beam have been tweaked—Kia says the rear shocks are now mounted vertically and are longer than before—and retuned but not reinvented. Kia also claims the unibody structure of the new Soul is 29 percent stiffer than before.
Base Souls are powered by a 1.6-liter, DOHC direct-injected four rated at 130 horsepower at 6300 rpm and 118 lb-ft of torque at 4850 rpm. That’s down 8 hp and 5 lb-ft from the 2013 edition at the same engine speeds. That powerplant is available lashed to a six-speed manual or six-speed automatic transmission, but Kia will sell hardly any of the 1.6-liter cars. Mainstream Soul Plus (+) and top-of-the-line Soul Exclaim (!) models are powered by a 164-hp, 2.0-liter four that makes 151 lb-ft of torque. The only transmission with the 2.0-liter is the six-speed automatic. These are the Souls that Kia will sell in volume.
Although the horsepower rating of the 2.0-liter is identical to that of the 2.0-liter offered in 2013, that peak power is now made at 6200 rpm instead of 6500. More important, the peak torque number is up only 3 lb-ft from the 2013 edition’s 148, but where it’s made has slid down 800 rpm, to 4000. That makes this revised four a much better companion to the automatic transmission, even though it’s still a less-than-thrilling pairing.
