Great as a used car!
All good things must come to an end, and then you can decide for yourself whether you think that statement applies to the Kia Soul. However, the fact is that the Soul is disappearing, and with that, a remarkable chapter in Kia’s history is coming to a close.
‘Wait a minute’, we hear you thinking. ‘Isn’t the Kia Soul long gone?’ For the Netherlands and Europe, that is indeed the case, but elsewhere in the world, the Soul is still on the price list. That seems to apply mainly to North America, because even in Kia’s home country of South Korea, the Soul has been gone for a while. Now Kia is announcing a definitive and global end, as production of the Soul will stop this month. With that, we’re closing over 17 years of Soul history, because the Kia Soul was first shown in production form in the spring of 2008. Three years earlier, there was already an almost production-ready precursor of the car that looked nearly identical, which from that point means it has actually been with us for twenty years.
The Kia Soul has always maintained the distinctive basic shape of this first generation.
Is the disappearance of the Soul that bad? Maybe not, but the Soul has definitely been significant in Kia’s history. From the beginning, it has been a quirky, square and tall model following the example of the Scion xB, Nissan Cube and Daihatsu Materia. So plenty of space and a nice ‘funky’ appearance. The Soul was also one of the first cars with which Kia really showed courage in terms of design, because you can be sure that the car stood out in the street scene in 2008. Actually, the Soul still does that, because you always spot it immediately. The last two generations of the Soul were only delivered as EVs in the Netherlands, but elsewhere in the world the car remained available with a gasoline engine. That applies in the US to this day, and there the compact Kia now always has a two-liter four-cylinder in the nose. That nose has been new since 2022, by the way, although we never saw that facelift version in Europe. We couldn’t find a total production number for the Kia Soul, but in the US alone, Kia has sold 1.5 million units since the beginning. The role of the Soul is now being taken over by other, mainly larger SUVs, and those at Kia to this day are often quite striking in shape. Still, we’ll miss it, that crazy Kia Soul.
As a used car
In the market for a Niro? Then also think about the Soul!
That last, electric Kia Soul was technically actually ‘just’ an E-Niro, but more fun and crazier. While the whole country is looking for such a Niro, as a connoisseur you would do well to definitely include the Soul in your search. At the time of writing, there are 43 units of this most recent batch for sale on this site and the prices here and there are quite a bit lower than those of a comparable Niro. Searching, selecting and finding can be done here .