No Reserve!!! Fun Little Kia Soul!! Cool Color Scheme on 2040-cars

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2014 Kia Soul totally redesigned, now bigger and more refined

The 2014 Kia Soul has been unveiled at the 2013 New York Auto Show, and the all-new five-door box-on-wheels offers up nearly an extra inch of wheelbase and a track that's wider by .6 inches. The changes offer up a bit more space indoors, and since overall height has remained the same, the Soul now looks a bit less top heavy than before. A wider rear hatch opening also makes loading and unloading cargo easier. Indoors, the 2014 Soul offers a substantially revised cabin with more soft-touch materials, and leather seats are now on the option sheet. Designers borrowed inspiration from the Kia Track'ster Concept indoors, using organic lines throughout.
An available eight-inch touch screen takes care of infotainment duties on the center stack, and now features the ability to scroll through content by flicking a finger, just like a smartphone, instead of paging through multiple screens. Buyers can also fit their 2014 Soul with a larger TFT LCD color screen in the instrument cluster, which now displays turn-by-turn directions on vehicles equipped with navigation.
Engineers managed to create a chassis that's also 29-percent stiffer, with 66 percent of the shell using ultra-high-strength steel for safety and rigidity. Under the hood, base models bow with a 1.6-liter direct-injection four-cylinder engine with 130 horsepower and 118 pound-feet of torque, while Plus and Exclaim trims get a more potent direct-injection 2.0-liter four-cylinder. That engine develops 164 hp and 151 lb-ft of torque, and both mills can be bolted to either a six-speed manual or automatic depending on trim. Check out the full press release below for more information.

Hyundai, Kia want to improve fuel economy by 25 percent

Hyundai and sister company Kia are giving themselves a little bit of time to make up a lot of ground in the fight for better fuel economy. We wonder if a recent multi-million fine might have something to do with this public target. The connected South Korean companies are vowing to increase their fleetwide fuel economy by 25 percent by 2020, Reuters reports. This will be done by further advancing their powertrains, looking at other ways to reduce weight, upgrading diesel engines and improving transmissions. That will all take money, but Kia and Hyundai will have $300 million less to invest thanks to a recent fine of more than $300 million from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Justice and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for incorrect fuel economy numbers on around 1.2 million vehicles from the 2011-2013 model years. The civil penalties – $100 million of the total – are the largest in EPA history. In late 2012, Hyundai and Kia admitted to overstating the fuel economy of a number of models and said they'd change the official MPG figures and compensate owners. Hyundai spokesman Chris Hosford confirmed to AutoblogGreen that the company set the dramatic fuel-economy improvement targets. In the US, where Hyundai and Kia are operated as separate entities, Hyundai "remains committed to meeting the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) requirements that have been set out by the US government," Hosford said The EPA recently released a report on fuel-economy and put Hyundai fourth in overall fleetwide fuel economy in the US among vehicle makers for the 2014 model year. The top three were Mazda, Honda and Subaru.

Hyundai, Kia announce buyback plan for angry Korean investors

Hyundai's controversial decision last September to move its Korean headquarters to an expansive (and expensive) new facility was met with a swift backlash by shareholders. After making the biggest land purchase in South Korean history, the company's share price took a nine-point nose dive.
Now, in a bid to get back in the good graces of its stockholders, Hyundai and its subsidiary, Kia, will make a $615-million stock buyback plan. Reuters claims this is the first time in ten years that Hyundai has made a buyback offer with the explicit purpose of pumping up share prices.
The total deal bumped up Hyundai's share prices 5.7 percent while Kia is up two percent, although neither company has fully recovered from the battering that followed the headquarters announcement. It's unclear what else it will take for Hyundai to recover the ground it lost during the land deal.