Note the conspicuous capital in that last sentence. For the boxy beast that scythes through the green sheet of the corpulent countryside is none other than Kia’s nubile next gen segment smashing family funster and this time around it’s more businesslike than Branson’s briefcase.
When I fired the fob in the Tuesday twilight, first encounters were with a hatchback hewn from handsome with a sturdy stance and sleek surfacing hiding an inside as sensible as an accountant’s aunt, legroom you could limbo in and more preened plastic up front than on a plumped up porn star.
The oil ingesting engine ignites in an instant and initial impressions reveal a talented transmission and a clutch as snappy as a shark in Snappy Snaps. A ride as pliant as a pair of kitten skin slippers just adds to an act as refined and practical as Nigel Havers’s knapsack.
Now we get to the only question that matters: How does the functional Soul brother handle a helming? There’s only one way to peel this puppy. So it is that I find myself facing the rapacious rock face of the finest wheelman’s playground the East Midlands can provide and straight away, the Soul bares its soul. When the blacktop starts to buck, the engine talks the torque and the gearshift slides through the gate like an oiled adder on acid. Better yet, the chassis stays classy in the face of firm questioning, keeping as poised as a porcelain panther and delivering a black rubber bear hug to the broken blacktop below.
Entering an especially nuggety complex the nose dives in like an apex-crazed Tom Daley when all at once I back off the gas hammer. In a split second the Soul drops a shoulder and the tail gets waggy. I simply catch it with a dab of oppo and I’m away.
The Kia Soul Connect Plus 1.6 CRDi is a bitch. And I spanked it.
Troy Queef is Executive Associate Editor-At-Large for DAB OF OPPO magazine
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