The Kia Soul is a small car that looks different from most others because it’s box-shaped. People like it because it’s fun and useful, but it sounds like they might stop making it soon.
A special edition car is a version made in smaller numbers with some extra cool features or designs to celebrate something special, like selling a million cars.
The Honda Element is a small SUV that looks like a box and has a flexible inside space. It was made for people with active lifestyles but didn't sell enough to keep making it.
The Honda CR-V is a popular small SUV that many people like because it’s easy to drive, doesn’t use too much gas, and has plenty of room inside. It’s often talked about because it’s one of the best-selling cars in its category.
The Nissan Cube is a small car that looks very different from most cars because it is shaped like a box. It was made in Japan and not many people in other countries liked its unusual look.
An entry-level economy car is a simple and cheap car that is good for getting around but doesn't have fancy features. It's often bought by people who want a car that doesn't cost too much.
Tariffs are extra taxes that make cars made in other countries more expensive when they are sold here. For example, the Kia Soul from Korea has a tax added to its price.
The Kia K4 is a newer car that is a bit bigger and costs more than the Kia Soul. It is a hatchback, which means it has a rear door that opens upwards for easy access to the back.
The Kia Sportage is a small SUV that many people like because it looks nice and doesn’t cost too much. It’s a good choice if you want a car that’s easy to use and has enough space for your stuff.
Electrified vehicles are cars that use electricity to help them run, either all the time or part of the time. This helps them pollute less and use less gas.
The BYD Dolphin is a small electric car made in China. It looks modern and is part of the new wave of electric cars that are becoming popular there.
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Hey, it's Daily Drive, executive producer Jake Nier in Detroit.
Thanks for joining me for this bonus episode of the show.
Earlier this week, automotive news reporter Richard Truett had a story about the end of the Kia
Soul. For a certain number of people, it was one of the most beloved and quirky vehicles in recent
memory. After 17 years and more than 1.5 million units sold in the US, Kia is ending production
of what was actually its all-time best-selling vehicle here in America.
So what made the Soul so special? Why did it succeed where competitors failed?
And what does its departures say about where the industry is heading?
Here to talk about that with me today is my colleague Richard Truett.
Richard, great to have you back on Daily Drive.
Jake, every now and then we get to do a really fun story. We have to cover the other stuff too,
but every now and then we get a story that basically will just tell itself because it's
so much fun. Well, and I also think there's a lot of value here too to people understanding
what happened here with the Kia Soul. You spent a lot of time talking to Soul owners for this piece.
What surprised you the most about sort of the passion that people have for this quirky little
car? You know, it's a really rare thing when a car appeals across all the demographic groups,
first-time buyers, last-time buyers, and people in between, singles, families, and all the other
permutations you can think of. Everybody seemed to love the Kia Soul. And why is that? Well,
it's hard to pinpoint just one thing. I think it's a bunch of things. First of all, it's a small car,
but it has a lot of interior room. That's really important. You know, people can put their stuff
in it and their family in it. That's important. It's easy to get in and out of the step in height
some of the owners told me was really low and they liked that. They didn't want to get an SUV,
but they wanted the utility of an SUV. Now, when the Soul came out, it was mostly aimed at young
people. And so Kia came up with this advertising campaign that had these hip-hop hamsters in it.
I remember that so well. That kind of created a funky image for the car. And then the really
strange thing is the last one of those ads aired 10 years ago, 2015, and people still talk about it.
It just created an image. So you have the image, a really agreeable price point around 20 grand,
a car that gives you everything that you need in terms of room and utility, and it's fun to drive,
and it really hasn't aged because it kind of looks the same. And you know, they just captured
this kind of magic in a bottle. The designer who worked on it, Tom Kearns, we kind of decided that
it was a happy accident that all these things came together and worked so well because if automakers
could do that, if there was a formula that they could write down on a page and duplicate it,
every car would be like the Kia Soul. But it's a very hard thing to do. And somehow Kia did it.
There you go. I mean, that what you mentioned about the space and the interior and it's still
being relatively small, I mean, just having that roomy feeling, but still being able to park it.
It's such a good combo right there.
It also, I want to mention that, you know, Kia had to work a little bit too. I mean,
over the years, there have been bigger engines and manual transmissions and EV versions and
CVTs and there's a special edition when in 2018, when they sold a million, they made a
one millionth edition. And so, you know, they worked to keep it fresh too. It's not like they just,
you know, didn't change it. They worked to keep it fresh.
Well, and like you said, it's been around for 17 years, sold over 1.5 million units in the U.S.
Why do you think that it succeeded whereas these other maybe so-called toaster cars?
I hope that's not too demeaning of a term, but, you know, like the Scion XB, the Honda element,
you know, those ones sort of failed. So what set the soul apart?
You know, I think toaster is kind of a term of endearment. At least it is to the soul crowd
because people, the soul crowd, a lot of them name their cars and some people call their toaster
car toaster. So they love it. You know, that's kind of a difficult question to answer. But if we
look back, we see that the first generation Scion XB sold really well. And then Toyota did what other
automakers always do. The next generation was bigger and looked a little different and it was
more expensive and people turned away from it. So it was a redesign that stripped the car of what
people liked about it. So that one kind of went by the wayside and it lasted two generations and
gone. The Honda element had a pretty good run, too, but Honda never really invested in it. You
know, there wasn't a great advertising campaign around it and the price crept up a little bit.
And then they had competition from this at their own CRV and whatnot. And that kind of just faded
away. The Nissan Cube was always going to be one of those cars that was really out there. I mean,
it was designed for the Japanese market and cars over there tend to be really,
really wacky. And they brought it over and it was just too different looking to ever really,
really be a mainstream hit. Somehow the soul kind of threaded all those needles and avoided all the
mistakes that everybody else made. You mentioned the names. I have to say a couple of these because
they were so funny to me. You talked to soul owners who named their cars things like Boxcar,
Willy and Hamster Cube. Love that. Love the creativity. I'm a car-namer myself. So my car's
name is Tallulah. But it's always so fun to hear that. Now, one owner that you spoke to
told you that she bought her third soul. She's put nearly 200,000 miles across all three of them.
What do you think is driving that kind of loyalty to an entry-level economy car? This
isn't like a car that is way up the chain here. It's something that you, like you said, it was
marketed toward younger folks that couldn't afford super expensive new cars. She told me that she
sees herself in the car. She said the car is me. She identifies with it as a kind of image that
she wants to project, that people can look at the car and think of her. And she just totally
identifies with it. And that is another really, really hard thing for an automaker to do to have
people so passionate about the car that they make it part of their family. Now, she's 75 years old
and she drives all around Phoenix to retirement communities where she plays piano and sings.
And so she brings equipment with her. And so she needs a car that has a lot of room for her stuff.
And, you know, when she heard that they were not going to make them anymore,
and her previous car, I think it was the 2019, was starting to get up there in mileage,
she was determined to get one last soul before, you know, they're all sold out. So she went to
dealership and she brought her checkbook and she said, I'm a buyer. And she drove a hard bargain,
but she left for the new car. And she's hoping that this will be her last car. But
I don't think that there's any other car that any other automaker could sell her. She loves the soul
so much. It's part of her identity at this point. Absolutely. Yeah. All right, Richard,
we've covered the personal side of things here in a minute or so. We're going to talk about the
business and industry angle. It's coming up next here on this bonus episode of Daily Drive.
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All right, Richard. So, let's talk a little bit about the business implications here. The
sole was Kia's all-time bestseller. Yes, you heard that right listener. The sole was Kia's
all-time bestseller here in the US. But their ending production anyway, walk us through why
Kia made that decision, even though it's created this huge devoted fanbase.
Well, I talked to Eric Watson, who's the vice president of sales for Kia. And he told me that
the end of the sole was planned long before the trade tensions and tariffs and all the other things
that are making imported cars difficult here in the US in 2026. The sole was made in Korea and
it does have a 15% tariff at this point in time. But really, if you look at where Kia was in late
2009 when the sole came out and where they are today, it's a very different company. Very,
was known for value cars, right? You didn't buy a Kia because you like the way it looked.
You didn't buy it because it was the fastest thing or anything like that. You bought it because
you didn't have a lot of money to spend on a car and you just needed something new with a warranty.
Now look where Kia is. They have a showroom full of really stylish cars and SUVs and they are a
completely different company. They're not, they still offer plenty of value, but they're far up
on the hierarchy of brands now from where they were. And so, in that sense, the sole didn't
fit in anymore. It had an MSRP of 21,000, which is, you know, it's pretty low compared to where
the rest of the market is today. I mean, that's an entry-level car. There's not going to be a lot
of money in it. And so, I think for Kia, they thought maybe it's time to move on. Now there's
another hatchback in their lineup called the K4, which I asked, is that the natural successor to
the sole and the jury's out on that? We don't know. No, it doesn't have the same kind of looks.
It's bigger and it's more expensive, but it's a hatchback and Kia will probably do pretty good
selling it. But the real test is, will it have the passion of the sole? And we don't know that,
but my guess is probably not. Well, it also sort of leaves dealers without an entry point, right?
I mean, there's no direct replacement, as you said, in the lineup. And so, what does this mean
for dealers who can't say like, hey, here's this $22,000 car. You can get in this today and, you
know, in a world where the average new car is $50,000, that's a pretty good sales pitch.
Well, I spoke to a salesman in Illinois and he told me that some sole owners, when they outgrow
their cars, they have been successful into moving them into a Celtos or a Sportage.
And so, it's possible that they could do that. But another buyer told me he'd like to stick with
Kia, but now he's looking at other brands too. So, you know, yes, they're losing their entry level
car that has a lot of loyalty behind it. But here's the thing, Jake, is it possible that
Kia could bring out a successor to the sole? Yeah, I think so. I think that the name has
so much goodwill behind it that eventually, someday, there will be a successor to it.
And I asked Tom Kerns, I said, what do you have in the lineup today that, you know,
has a lot of the elements of it? And there's a car that they don't sell here called the EV3,
which is a good looking hatchback. But if you look at the front of it, it's not unlike the
current sole. It's very possible that we'll see that car here. They've talked about it,
and maybe around New York Auto Showtime, we'll hear if it's coming over. That might be
in the interim until that name appears on a vehicle again, something that could work.
All right, Richard, I know you're a huge car guy. And so, I have to ask this question
to end off things here. You know, with the sole going away, it's for one thing. Man,
I said that, and I'm like, wow, that feels like a metaphor in some ways. You know,
cars have represented something to people for decades and decades in the U.S. especially,
where car culture is so strong. We've talked about this in the past, you and me. And it also
appealed to such a diverse group. You had young buyers, you had seniors, families.
Now, automakers are moving more upmarket. I mean, Kia and Hyundai are great examples. They're
moving toward more electrified vehicles. So, I'm wondering, are we losing this affordable,
quirky vehicle culture that attracts these really dedicated fan bases? And again,
with your car being part of your identity and your personality, are we moving into an era
where that's just not the vibe anymore? You know, I can answer that question in two ways.
If we look at the domestic auto industry and the bigger import players like Volkswagen and what
not, I would say yes. But if you take a look at what's going on in China, we're seeing incredible
creativity. Some of their designs are like really, really out there in whack-a-doodle,
but some of them like the BYD Dolphin are kind of pretty cool. So, it may be that if there is a
void in the market that's left by the absence of cars like the Kia Soul, that maybe the Chinese
step in and fill it. We'll have to see. Richard Truett's piece in automotive news is Heart and
Soul Kia Bids Farewell to a Beloved Funky Classic. Richard, excellent writing here. Really
appreciate your look into this and thanks for joining us here on this episode of Daily Drive.
Thanks for having me on, Jake. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of Daily Drive.
Come back on Monday for a brand new full episode of the show.
About this episode
The Kia Soul, a quirky and beloved hatchback, is ending production after 17 years and over 1.5 million US sales. Known for its roomy interior, unique style, and strong emotional connection with owners, it stood out among similar niche vehicles like the Scion XB and Honda Element. The Soul's success came from its blend of practicality, affordability, and fun image, including memorable marketing like the hip-hop hamsters. Kia’s shift towards more upscale models and rising costs led to the Soul’s retirement, leaving questions about its successor and impact on entry-level buyers.
After 17 years and 1.5 million units sold, Kia is ending production of the Soul, its all-time bestselling vehicle in the U.S. Reporter Richard Truett joins Jake Neher to discuss why the quirky, affordable hatchback earned such devoted fans across all demographics, what went wrong with competitors such as the Scion xB and Honda Element, and whether we’re losing the era of affordable, personality-driven cars as automakers move upmarket.
