Kia: Heart and Soul

The Kia Soul Burner is design-savvy, but, like the rest of its features, the look is practical and not too over the top. Photo / Supplied

Kia's aimed its Soul at the design high-ground. But the top-spec Burner takes the concept the furthest.

It's no shrinking violet, the flame red of our test car enhanced by red panels in the cabin and on the seats.

Soul Burner features on-the-door speakers that have LED light rings. Switched on, they pulse restfully or throb to the beat of whatever music you're playing. Nice idea, it'll certainly amuse passengers, but it also interfered with radio reception at the rural end of my daily drive, and remained off for the duration of the Burner's stay.

This Soul was fitted with the 94kW/260Nm, 1.6 litre variable geometry, turbo-charged diesel auto. It's a development of the unit fitted to Hyundai's i30, but despite the decent spread of torque it'd do better with a five, not four-speed auto.

This car isn't an incisive handler, but that's not what it's designed to be. Most buyers will spend a lot of time in town, with open road trips for practical purposes rather than fun.

They'll want a car that will effortlessly flit from A to B to C, do a fuss-free job of daily driving and look cutting-edge while doing it.

One of the neatest features is the rear-vision camera. Select reverse, and the screen appears in the left-side of the central mirror. Flicking your eyes from screen (for the close-up view) to mirror (to see what's still out of the camera's view) is a doddle. Better still, the camera makes up for the otherwise poor rear vision caused by those chunky C-pillars.

The extra two speakers and the broad range of multimedia you can access are merely icing on the cake.

There were cubbies where you wanted them - a generous 13 of them, the seats and boot worked exactly as expected, the engine and transmission proved fuss-free and so did the handling, provided I didn't search for some hidden (non-existent) sporting gene.

Meanwhile, the Burner turned heads.

It looks as if it's rolled directly from a design studio, but in a nice way, for none of the quirks come with functional compromises.

The price, $39,990, might seem steep to some for a compact car.

It's not, for one that feels and looks this special. If you like the colour and the OTT flourishes, you'll love this Burner - not least because those flourishes embellish a vehicle that at heart just wants a fuss-free life.

SOUL

We like
Concept-car looks, rear view camera and its rear-mirror screen position, five-year warranty imparts confidence.

We don't like
Four-speed auto needs an extra cog, no reach adjust for the wheel, speaker-mounted mood lights a bit OTT.

Powertrain
1.6-litre common rail, variable turbo diesel, 94kW at 4000rpm and 260Nm from 1900-2750rpm, four-speed auto drives front wheels.

Performance
0-100km/h in 11.3s, claims 5.8l/100km.

Safety
Six airbags, ESP, ABS brakes, park assist with rear-view camera.

What it's got
18-inch alloys, radio, CD, MP3, USB, aux sound system with eight speakers, keyless entry, air con.

Vital stats
4105mm long, 340-litre boot, 48-litre tank.