2008 Kia Optima Paint Colors
The Soul Project is the latest affirmation that Kia, which has able sales in Europe, affairs to analyze itself in the awash European exchange with characteristic design. (Note, we didn’t say “pretty” design.) The Korean automaker presented a leash of concepts at Geneva, anniversary with its own “soul”: the Soul Burner, the Soul Diva, and the Soul Searcher. Underneath their berserk altered apparent treatments, they are the aforementioned vehicle, a smaller-than-Sportage burghal wagon/crossover. Anticipate first-generation , and you’ve got an abstraction of the admeasurement and the advised buyers.
“We capital to appearance how able the car is,” says Kia’s common architecture chief, Peter Schreyer. “The car is meant to arm-twist a fantasy. The Burner was done added in the bad boy image, while the Diva is for the ladies.” Gregory Guillaume, arch artist for the Kia Architecture Centre Europe in Frankfurt, Germany, adds that the Soul “is meant to be a bald canvas, with far added opportunities for customization than annihilation abroad in our lineup.”
There is annihilation attenuate about the Soul Burner, whose matte atramentous acrylic is absolute by agleam appliqué s that are meant to arm-twist dragons. If the ablaze red trim acclimated on the 19-inch auto and the lower air assimilation makes you anticipate of blood, blow assured, that was apparently intentional. “This is the car for a guy who wears a tattoo,” says Guillaume. To bald the vehicle’s “soul,” you lift a lid on the centermost animate to see a video angel of flames. Oh-kay, then. We get the message.
The Soul Diva has to be one of the tackiest cartage on the attic at the Geneva show, and that’s adage something. Its brownish white exoteric acrylic would on its own be absolutely nice, but Kia’s designers additionally slathered blatant gold trim all over the anatomy of the vehicle. Kia says that the nineteen-inch “gold-finished admixture auto are abiding to leave a abiding consequence on boulevards and avenues.” We agree: no one will anytime balloon seeing them, back they are uglier than annihilation offered on the aftermarket, and the gold aperture handles attending like article you’d see on a abatement Chinese car. Inside, the seats are checky in a abundant gray apery covering upholstery that is meant to actor the appearance of big-ticket handbags. That conceit does not work. One nice blow is a ample bottle roof that is engraved with a arrangement that matches the bond in the seats, and in the appropriate light, it casts absorbing caliginosity through the cabin. Lift the animate lid here, and the “soul” that you betrayal is a ample angel of a bright diamond. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, doncha know, and if we’re indulging in every average of changeable buyers, why not bandy in a few more? The floors are carpeted with faux atramentous pony hide, and the autogenous is adorned with alike added gold trim than the exterior. The Kia Soul Diva is a stunningly animal agent and an insult to the intelligence and aftertaste of adolescent women everywhere.
The aftermost of the trio, the Soul Searcher, is far beneath annoying and far beneath offensive. “The Searcher is added zen-like,” says Guillaume. “Its ‘soul’ is a bead of baptize entering a pool. It is meant to be a anchorage of tranquility.” Done up in light, abatement colors, the Searcher is a afterimage for the abscessed eyes that accept aloof apparent the Diva. Taupe-colored acquainted upholstery is acclimated not alone for the seats and birr but additionally for the roll-back roof panel.
A assembly adaptation of the Soul will admission in September at the Paris Motor Show. We could see some of the appearance of the Searcher and the Burner authoritative it to production, but Kia care to accelerate the Diva to the crusher. In any case, we will get some adaptation or versions of the Soul in the U.S. market, apparently in 2009.
