The Kia Soul is a good car. Since its introduction, it’s always been compact, economical, and even a little bit charming — it has a kind of character that one can’t often find for the Soul’s $21,935 base price. It’s also, unfortunately, dead. Kia announced that Soul production will end at the end of October, and take all that character with it. Rest in peace, little Soul.
Kia gave us the Soul back in 2009, immediately blasting us with the dancing hamster ads that everyone to this day still has a strong opinion on. I think they were fun, Andy seethes with blinding rage any time they’re referenced. Clearly I’m right. The ads, though, were meant to target the car’s ideal buyer: Someone younger, not buying their first car but maybe their first new one. It was cheap, practical, and a little out-there — a great combo for the 18-to-35 bracket. And love them or hate them, you’ll never forget those ads.
RIP to a real one
Was the Soul perfect? Absolutely not. It fell victim to the same Kia Boyz as its stablemates, and its engine could tear itself apart, but by God did it strive to be something unique. Even in an era that it shared with the Scion xB and Nissan Cube, the Kia was a weird one. Modern cars are derided for being too samey, too designed by committee, market research, and focus groups, but the Kia Soul was designed by hamsters.
I would tell the Kia Soul not to go gentle into that good night, but the time for that seems to be past. We’ve got precious few weeks left of production until the third-generation Kia Soul is well and truly dead, with its quirks never to grace dealer lots again. Hopefully, future cars learn from the Soul: You can go after a specific target market, you can meet the needs of a buyer persona, without needing all your uniquities and hard edges rounded off by the ever-flowing waters of focus groups and cost-cutting. Make cars weird, automakers, the way the Soul was weird. We’ll buy them for decades to come.
