Here's a little background on how I came to Kia (and specifically the Soul):
We have an '07 Focus SES that we're leasing, and that terminates at the end of the month. So needless to say, we were looking at different options. I come from a very varied automotive background. My family bleeds Ford Blue, and I'm no exception. Even though my new toy and daily driver is the Kia Soul +, we also have a Ford Explorer that my wife drives, and I've got a '91 Mustang LX hatchback with a 302 under the hood in the garage for sunny, summer days.
The Focus was actually my wife's car, I took it over when we picked up the Explorer. I had been driving an '07 Mini Cooper that I bought new. I loved that car to death, but it was just too small. Our two sons (13 & 8) were finding it more and more difficult to keep their feet and knees out of the backs of the front seats. Well, that and it had a manual 6-speed transmission; my wife can't drive stick and I definitely wasn't going to let her grind my gears in that car, so we found ourselves constantly having to shuffle vehicles in the driveway.
I'd seen the Soul "Hamster" commercial with the Fort Knox song and thought it looked pretty cool. Not necessarily something I'd buy, but cool. So anyway, as our lease end was fast approaching, I knew we needed to start considering vehicles. Of course I immediately thought of Ford and a new Focus or possibly a Fusion. I'd seen a Forte Koup running around the neighborhood and thought it was a pretty sharp looking car, but knew that the 2-door was not going to work with the kids, and the 4-door kinda killed the whole image of the car being sporty.
I did a little research on the Kia website, and the more I learned about the Soul, the more I liked it. I have to be honest; in this current car market, you 'll not likely find a better equipped vehicle for the dollar. We went this morning after getting the boys on the bus and took a Soul + for a test drive, and we were hooked.
So now we have an awesome Soul + (Auto transmission, of course) in Molten (hence the name LiquidSOUL - I thought MoltenSOUL would be too obvious) sitting in our driveway and I can't wait to get to learn all of its idiosyncrasies.
I'm looking forward to reading and learning a lot from my fellow Soul-mates (pun intended
).
