Is the Soul’ster one Kia too many?

Unless you’ve been living under an AMC Gremlin the past few years, you may have noticed that Kia, along with its parent Hyundai, have made great strides in the new car market, mainly at the expense of the former Detroit Three and formerly untouchable Japanese brands like Honda and Toyota.

Here’s the thing: Kia Canada moved out the door 3,464 vehicles last month, up 28.2 per cent from the same month last year. On a year-to-date basis, sales are up 21.2 per cent over 2008 and November marks the eleventh month of consecutive growth.

Great. Fantastic. Good for them. But now we read that a movement is afoot within Kia’s U.S. design ranks to actually put its Soul’ster concept from this year’s Detroit show,, above, into production.

As is, the Soul’ster is a 2+2, convertible version of the Soul boxy wagon. If anyone decided to do a remake of Baywatch, the Soul’ster would make a great beach buggy for the Barbie and Ken lifeguards. But beyond that, would it have any legs as a mass-market product?

Would you consider buying a Soul’ster?   

Does the Kia brand have enough cachet to make the Soul’ster credible on the street?

Or would the Kia end up as another Suzuki XC90 (Google it), or any other dumb halo cars
that should have been left as concepts?

[Source: PickupTrucks.com]

Comments

[Randy]

This thing is just as impractical as the Suzuki XC90. Well actually the XC90 was worse since it had no cargo area like the Soulster does.

Kia should take note of recent attempts at vehicles like this. The XC90, the Subaru Baja and perhaps the Chevy SSR, where are they now? All were colossal failures. The SSR though was a lame duck from the outset, since GM wanted about $80K for each one. Might as well buy a Corvette for that kind of coin.

Kia should just sell the current Soul which seems to be doing very well.

[Chris]

I think that, if Kia would lengthen the area behind the seats, and close it off from the passenger compartment, it would have a marvelous compact pick-up that would do very well here. It would do even better if some of the advanced diesel engine options offered in Europe were also available to Canadians.

[Brad]

The XC90 was only a 2 passenger car, the layout on this reminds me more of the old Suzuki/Chevy Sidekick/Tracker, which to the best of my knowledge sold quite a few in its day.

[Michel]

Didn't Isuzu also tried something like that?... and if I remember correctly, the 'older' Toyota 4Runner could also be made in 1/2 convertible...

[Kevin]

Hi there,

I did google the suzuki reference BUT the only design I could find was for the Suzuki X-90 (not XC). I presume that is the car that you would like to reference.