The Kia Soul is a South Korea-produced compact, mini MPV launched at the 2008 Paris Motor Show. It has a bold and edgy design, and it comes with more styling and package combinations than any Kia vehicle created before. When it comes to its safety features, it’s apparently topnotch as it has been awarded by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) with 5 stars, which is the highest possible safety rating. Despite its size, it got an overall weighted score of 75%. Breaking down the crash test results, it was rated 87% for adult protection, 86% for child protection, 39% for pedestrian protection, and 86% for Safety Assist equipment.

A wide array of safety features have been incorporated into the Kia Soul’s compact design, such as advanced front and full-length side airbags, front seat active headrests, an anti-lock brake system with electronic brake-force distribution, electronic stability control, a tire pressure monitoring system, and rear disc brakes which are standard on all models with the exception of the Base trim. All these and the high-tensile strength steel and up-to-date safety technology used in the Kia Soul allowed the vehicle to be among the safest of B-segment family cards worldwide, and, following the European-built Kia cee’d, the second Kia vehicle to have received the highest possible safety rating from Euro NCAP.

Aside from the assurance that you have of the safety of the vehicle’s occupants when you drive it, you can benefit from the completeness of safety equipment in the Kia Soul when buying auto insurance for it. This applies for any other vehicle, for that matter. The higher a car’s safety rating, the cheaper it is to have it insured. Other factors that affect the premium are the buying price of the car itself and how cheap its repair parts will be in the case of an accident where the owner files a claim. Kia cars and their repair parts are not unreasonably priced and they are among the best in terms of safety and security equipment. Be a safe, infrequent, law-abiding driver of any one of them and you’ll be impressed at the discount you can get with your car insurance.

Crumbling pickup truck sales and rising gas prices have led Hyundai and its affiliate Kia to abandon their plans to build pick-up trucks in the U.S. “Because of high oil prices, the light-truck market has been declining,’” Kim Dong Jin, Vice Chairman of the Hyundai said today. “We don’t think it’s the right time.”

As for Kia’s new Georgia plant where Hyundai and Kia carmakers considered building their pickup trucks, the company now says that it will be used to produce the Sorento SUV.

Fiat sells cars with the software outside the U.S.

Kia Motors will be entitled to sell cars equipped with Microsoft Auto around the world starting in November, but the company is working on new capabilities and probably won’t be ready this fall, said Velle Kolde, senior product manager for Microsoft Auto.

Kolde wouldn’t say what types of features Kia may add but said the software could include navigation and an emergency call service activated when air bags inflate.

“What specific features you see will be tailored toward the types of vehicles they go into,” Kolde said.

Microsoft is now free to license the software to other automakers as well.

Kia has announced that interior components on its cars are smell-tested just for Europeans.

As part of the company’s push to ensure that its cars are perceived as being totally European, it seals components in a jar and has them smell-tested before they are fitted.

David Labrosse, from the product planning department of Kia’s European Research and Development centre in Germany, said:
‘The European nose is quite different to the Korean one. We like different smells so we developed odours for the car’s interior that were pleasing to Europeans.’

Labrosse says that it is difficult to describe the ideal smell, adding: ‘If we don’t like the smell, we try to find the cause of the problem by breaking the materials down and cooking them to find out where the wrong odour is coming from.’