Detroit Auto Show: Kia Soul'ster Concept is Cute, But Risky

Kia showed the Kia Soul’ster concept car at this week’s Detroit auto show. It’s essentially a Kia Soul, which is a car-based SUV, with part of the roof removed, to create a four-seat pickup.

There’s also a removable roof panel over the front seat. With all the panels removed, the roof is more of a roll bar than a roof.

Based on a partial photo of the concept car Kia released in advance of the show, I guessed in an earlier blog that the concept car could have high-tech and/or additional luxury features, which turns out to be wrong, and I never would have guessed at the open-top body style.

The Soul’ster looks like it would be fun to drive, and fun to ride in the open-air back seat. It’s distinctive. If it were cheap enough, some young buyers would probably be interested. But here’s hoping Kia doesn’t go there, based on prior experiences for other car companies.

There’s always a chance history won’t repeat itself, but the Subaru version of a similar concept, the Subaru Baja (2003-2006), was a notable flop. Fundamentally, the Baja just wasn’t that practical. The pickup bed was too small to carry much of anything. Even a bicycle had to have the front wheel removed. The Baja was also introduced with a lot of upscale features, like leather upholstery, which made it too expensive for what it was.

Before the Baja, Subaru also had the Brat, a small, car-based pickup, from the late 1970s until the mid-1980s. The name was actually an acronym, for Bi-drive, Recreational All-Terrain. The Brat was designed to get around the “chicken tax,” a 25-percent tariff on imported trucks, originally imposed in retaliation for European duties on American chicken products.

To get around the chicken tax, Subaru put two, rear-facing seats in the pickup bed. Legally, that made the Brat a “passenger vehicle” and not a “truck.” The thing was, you really weren’t supposed to ride back there, even though people often did. Subaru was sued after the Brat suffered some rollover accidents, where rear-seat passengers were ejected.

It may also be germane to point out that GM just killed plans to introduce a car-based pickup in the U.S. market, based on a car from Australia. So if Kia is serious about building the Soul’ster, apparently it sees a demand that others don’t see.

On the other hand, a small pickup – that is, a more plain-vanilla pickup — based on the Soul might make sense. Kia dealers have told Automotive News they would like to get a small pickup. That would be a safer, more conservative step for the next Soul derivative.