TTAC Product Planning Advice: The Kia Stonic and Soul Edition

It seems so obvious as to be unmistakable. You’ve been selling an unexpectedly successful Kia Soul for nearly a decade, turning it from what was thought to be a niche-market idea into one of your most popular products.

Do that again.

Hence, here cometh the Kia Stonic. It’s not bound for America, at least not yet, but the Stonic serves elsewhere as the Kia version of the Hyundai Kona. Only unlike the Kona, the Stonic is — like the Soul — a front-wheel-drive subcompact-based “utility vehicle.”

Cargo volume? Virtually identical, at 12.4 cubic feet for the Stonic and 12.5 cubic feet for the Soul. Pricing? In the United Kingdom, the Soul stretches from £14,310 to £23,565, starting slightly below the Stonic’s £16,295 entry point and rising above the Stonic’s top-spec £20,495 price.

This overlap in price, mission, and size is exactly what the doctor ordered, so we have a few vital recommendations for Kia’s rivals.

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Manual Wagons Total 0.0956% Of All New Cars On Sale: Cadillac Offers One, BMW Doesn't
Juan Barnett of DCAutoGeek has compiled the definitive infographic on our favorite niche segment: manual wagons. Using inventory from Cars.com, Barnett foun…
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Scion FR-S: How To Say "Hachi-Roku" In American
TTAC has long been bearish on the Scion brand, and in a lot of ways, Toyota’s global tri-branding strategy with its new “86” sportscar (Toy…
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What's Wrong With This Picture: Quantum Niche Theory Edition
When word first began circulating that BMW was considering an X4, I wonderedis BMW trying to prove a kind of automotive Zeno’s paradox, in which niches…
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Here Comes Another Four-Door Coupe!

You might think that now that Mercedes is coming out with a four-door-coupe-wagon, the four-door-coupe craze of the last several years might be ready to disappear in a puff of internal contradiction… but you’d be wrong. So focused was it on the four-door-SUV-coupe and the bloated-sedan-hatch-cum-GT niche, BMW completely slept through the four-door-sedan niche that Mercedes first attacked in 2004. And as far as the Bavarians are concerned, it’s better to attack a niche late than never. And they’re doing so with a “GranCoupe” that is remarkably similar to the existing 6er coupe… only with two doors. The entire premise behind the four-door-coupe is that it combines the practicality of a sedan with the panache of a coupe. The problem, in this case, seems to be that BMW’s 6er coupe has so little panache, this four-door model blends right into Bee-Emm’s increasingly indistinguishable lineup. Between that and the late attack on a played-out segment, it’s difficult to harbor high hopes for this latest niche-warrior.

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What's Wrong With This Picture: MINI's Untouched Niche Edition
Since cementing its premium-retro-cutesy positioning in the marketplace, MINI’s been leveraging its two platforms into a niche-munching binge. Soon the…
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Swiss EV Firm Pitches Investors On The Niche Mindset

Now that the worst part of the global economic crisis is over, investors are fired up for any investment opportunity that looks good and doesn’t smell funny. Especially in the alternative-energy field. Some ventures make sense while others are based on a rather exotic logic. Better Place, for instance: its institutional investors say it’s “the only EV + infrastructure play”, and therefore something you’d better not miss. I’d just say it requires weird financial reasoning to justify electric filling stations stocked with expensive exchange batteries.

Earlier this week, I was at Mindset Holding’s press conference in Switzerland, where they announced they had received 75 million Swiss Francs of financing from a US fund, GEM Group, with another 108 millions optional. Mindset will be using this money to produce its exotic electric sports coupe — the one I thought was fantastically forward-looking when I witnessed it last year.

Is this madness? After all, Mindset in 2012 will be competing with Tesla’s Model S, the Fisker Karma, and numerous electrified or hybridized German and Japanese luxury cars. Who’d spend 100,000 Francs on a Swiss made electric three-seater?

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The Strange And Wonderful Custom Cars Of Xenatec
To be perfectly honest, we weren’t familiar with the work of Weinsberg, Germany-based Xenatec group before hearing that the custom bodywork shop would…
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The Ultimate Niche Machine: BMW Considering X4

You can already buy a BMW 3-Series in sedan, coupe, station wagon and X3 “cute-ute” bodystyles, and for some automakers that might be enough. For niche-crazed BMW though, it’s just the beginning. A 3-Series GT is planned in the mold of the 5-Series GT, as a midway-point between the coupe, sedan and station wagon versions. You know, in case you can’t decide which you want. “This has never existed!” screamed Autobild… back in 2008. Of course, now it does exist in the form of the 5-series GT, which could actually end up replacing the 5-series wagon in the US market. And as the march of the niche vehicles rolls onward, there’s one more segment that the 3-series architecture still hasn’t capitalized on: the jacked-up midway point between coupe and SUV. That’s right babies, the X4.

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What's Wrong With This Picture: Maximum Legacy Edition
Bob Lutz and Bob Eaton bask in the glow of niche appeal, circa 1997 . But don’t put MaxBob in a box:“People who characterize me as a mindless mu…
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Spyker Stocks Soar, But Sergio Isn't Buying

Here’s a situation in a hypothetical tense for you. If you were the CEO of a car company which never made a profit in 11 years and you offered to pay $74 million for a car company which hasn’t made a profit since 2001 and had a badly damaged brand, how would you expect your share price to go? Trust me, you’re not even close. MarketWatch.com reports that Spyker shares soared as much as 74% when they announced they had reached an agreement to buy Saab from General Motors. Spyker’s market capitalisation is now €107 million, four times more than when GM first put Saab up for sale.

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  • Corey Lewis Think how dated this 80s design was by 1995!
  • Tassos Jong-iL Communist America Rises!
  • Merc190 A CB7 Accord with the 5 cylinder
  • MRF 95 T-Bird Daihatsu Copen- A fun Kei sized roadster. Equipped with a 660cc three, a five speed manual and a retractable roof it’s all you need. Subaru Levorg wagon-because not everyone needs a lifted Outback.
  • Merc190 I test drive one of these back in the day with an automatic, just to drive an Alfa, with a Busso no less. Didn't care for the dash design, would be a fun adventure to find some scrapped Lancia Themas or Saab 900's and do some swapping to make car even sweeter. But definitely lose the ground effects.