Weird Crush Update: Kia's "Soulster" Is The Kia Ray
TTAC readers have suffered through my weird crush on Kia’s Picanto/Morning-based “Tam” for months now, patiently indulging my fascination with a car that’s so niche it won’t even be sold in Europe. But with Kia showing off these production images of what will be known as the Kia Ray, it seems that a lot of what I found so beguiling about this A-segment MPV will make it to production. What we’re looking at is a tiny A-segment micro-van, with the Picanto/Morning‘s 1.0 three-banger or 1.25 liter four. And, as we suspected based on early prototype shots, the car has three standard doors and one mini-slider on the passenger side, confirming that this funky little cube is half Kia Soul, half Hyundai Veloster. At a little over $11k, the Ray will also be a relatively cheap Kia, which is why it’s focused on Asian markets like Korea and China… but it’s probably too small to ever make it to the US or Europe. Scion is probably breathing a small sigh of relief…
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I like this, reminds me of the old Mitsubishi LRV/Expo tall wagons. The larger Expo sold here in the US as both the Dodge/Plymouth Colt Vista wagons beginning in 1983 and later as the Mitsubishi Expo had conventional doors and was available as a 3 row in some markets. The smaller Expo LRV was a shorter wheelbase version of the same car but it had a single sliding door on the passenger side. However, I do see similarities to the Soul, the Cube in its general shape though. Tall boxy wagons like this are as much hatchback as they are wagons, which is why I've always loved the tall Tercel and Civic wagons of yore over the present day Civic based CR-V, which is more mini SUV in stance than anything else.
They'd need to add a turbo to get close to ten seconds. With the 1 liter 3-pot, the Kia Morning takes about fifteen seconds to hit 100 km/h (equivalent to a 14+ 0-60 time). But still... that car has a whole lot of character. I can't wait to get ahold of the Ray. Since Korea is a left-hand drive market, gray imports should come to our shores quite quickly.