Anyone else picture GoFrogs drinking a giant cup of coffee while typing that? LOL.
Well, coffee is all natural and made with water. I have a minimum of 20oz a day. (coffee) (cheers)
The Kia Soul? You're nuts! I briefly had a thought of looking at that car and then looked in my co-workers "hatch". [emoji39][emoji33] NO...
(Also disagree on Renegade) Cherokee was my number 2. So glad I didn't get that. MIL got one and had brake issues at 10K.
Our goal on our car was to keep the price below $24-25k. That is hard to do in this current car market. We were not going to lease (been burned once - reason why Toyota was not on the list). It was going to be the Wife's and see needed a vehicle that could carry a kid (4 at the time), be comfortable to ingress/egress, good on gas, safe, carry stuffs, have a CD player and could be had w/cloth seats.
She was stepping out of an '04 Nissan Pathfinder SE 4WD (3.5 V6, xfer case, pwr do-dads, but cloth seats.) The PF was virtually unstoppable, but we were tired of only going 260 miles on a 17 gal tank. It got 13-20mpg depending on time of year and avg'd 15-17 most times (it was rated 14City / 18Hwy).
Most of our test drives were in base models or near base models w/no options. The KIA Soul+ was one of the VERY few cars that DID NOT have a CVT and still had good safety ratings and drove well and didn't break the bank. The OP did not put a price stipulation down, so why not... We passed on the Jeeps due to safety aspects and on reliability ones too; plus our dollar did not go as far in the Jeeps as it did in other vehicles. Also, have you seen how any Souls are out there (Gen 1 and 2). It is KIAs top selling vehicle. Sure, most might be base models as those can be had for under $18k and offer a lot of car for the dollar (same price as a Honda Fit LX/EX w/CVT).
The Soul+ was an easy car to live with. Everything was w/in reach and in the right place; although the turn signal indicators are at the bottom of the instrument cluster. It was just good all around. I cannot speak for winter performance and it was the only car we tested that could not come with AWD. It was zippy enough with the 162hp 2L and 6spd auto. We thought it would make a good city, run about car...but then I checked the Mazda dealer one last time and they had a CPO CX-5 Touring AWD (no options) in our price range.
Test drove it twice and bought it. it just felt the best out of everything we drove and felt we could deal with some of the things that were not as good as the competition. Driving feel goes a long way. We thought the infotainment was a bit clunky at first, but it was just different. Now that we have had it for about 7 months, it has become old habit. We still don't use all its features and since ours did not come w/NAV, we don't have that to worry about.
KIA Soul. Good daily runabout. Affordable base model, good features on the mid-priced trim (+ Plus); turbo and lots of bells/whistles on the top trim (! Exclaim). And it comes in different, fun colors. Bonus >>> At Halloween, one could dress up as the Hamsters and be ok w/it.
(burnout)
