Let’s Talk About My Soul – Kia Soul Turbo

Listen, the first part of this summer has been phenomenal. We were provided a Kia Soul Turbo from Kia, as a loaner in exchange for a review on our site. We were all too happy to oblige. Kia’s the real MVP of June, July and a little bit of August. 

For the first time since 2006, we were a two car household, and we were anywhere and everywhere we could be. That’s one of the perks to being a part of the Kia Family. Okay, okay, that’s a perk of being a car reviewer, but STAY WITH ME! My entire soul was revived driving the Kia Soul around for several weeks, and I can’t wait to share about it. If you’re wondering what makes this a Turbo instead of just a Soul, you’ll see the red stripe on the side, front and back, and when driving it, you can definitely feel the turbo kick in.  It’s a 1.6 liter 4-cylinder engine that produces 201 horsepower. 

Even though I experienced some parenting lows, and wife lows, and daughter lows this summer – kind of like any summer to be honest – I wasn’t held back because I HAD A SECOND CAR THAT WAS AWESOME! Can you tell it doesn’t really take that much to make me happy? Just the knowledge that I can get up and go whenever I need to? Yeah, that. It’s called freedom. No waiting on Mr. Houseful to get home from work. No asking to borrow another car, AND not worrying about the gas in the car because the gas mileage in the Kia Soul Turbo was amazing! Outside of the specs of the car, can you let me just gush a little bit about it? 

We’re the family that counts cars that look like ours. While we had the Kia Soul Turbo, we counted a whopping total of 383 Kia Souls (the question afterwards was always “Is it a turbo though?) on the streets of Illinois and Indiana. We tried to get into Wisconsin and Michigan, but never made it. Bummer. We DID make it to Indiana Dunes for a week of fun, and we got to explore more of our city than we normally do during the rest of the year. Can you tell I kind of hate taking my kids on public transportation from my new digs. Moving this far South has made me completely lazy. Being behind the wheel of the Kia Soul Turbo though? Sweet. The space behind the wheel was small enough for me, and large enough for Mr. Houseful. You could change the mode of what showed on the instrument panel for you, and mine always had what was going on, on the navigation screen. Mr. Houseful however, loved having all of his vehicle specs showing on the screen behind the steering wheel. The output was easy to read, and nothing seemed off putting as far as font (FONTS MATTER) or layout. We even got to use the Android Auto function, which I’ll talk about in another post. 

There’s something to be said about being able to pack enough for four people into the trunk space of this car. With 18.8 cubic feet in the trunk alone, it was a breeze. I didn’t have to lift the trunk cover either, and that’s TWO carry-on sized pieces of luggage back there, along with a BUNCH of bags that I’ve made or amassed over the years. There are also a bunch of rocks from Lake Michigan because we collect them like they’re gold. 

 

Remember in my Feeding My Soul post, I talked about crossing bridges. Well, we did, and we also took photos in front of bridges. Lots of them. This one was my favorite because we had to travel back roads to find it. I did this without my husband y’all. I’m an adventurer, and I’m decent with directions, but being put in charge of directions, and navigation, AND driving three littles around is quite the adventure this way. We did it though, and found this AMAZING bridge in Porter County, Indiana! You can read about it >here< and check out all of the other spots we saw in that area. After exploring the city, we took a day to relax at the beach, where we gathered the rocks, and found an awesome piece of driftwood to explore, er, take pictures of. 

Another thing we decided we wanted to do was to find some great street art in our city. It’s something that becomes a bit of background when you’ve lived in a city as great as Chicago for all of your life. Street art IS the city, and sometimes it takes hopping in a new car to see it again. 

I admit that I did underestimate the Turbo power of this car given that it’s a 4 cylinder. This car had quite a bit of pick-up, even if it felt that it needed to click in order to get there. I didn’t let that detail deter me from enjoying opening it up a bit on the road when I was able to – you know, speed limits and all. 

I think the best testament on how awesome this small, but mighty (like me) car is, was the fact that no matter where I went, I always had other people stopping me to ask me specifics about it. I carried the mulroney tags with me, so that I could make sure to tell them the right price, and what was included, and then we parted ways. But not before seeing them often taking a third or fourth look at the vehicle. 

Kind of the same way I looked when the folks came back to pick my loaner up. We watched as it drove away into the sunrise. The kids even gave a fitting Oscar worthy “cry” about it. I didn’t even tell them to shush. We’re still crying daily over not having this car. I know that you all can feel me. Seriously though, GREAT second car for us, and great on the gas mileage,(23 miles in the city) and space in general. With me being at home with children during the day, it’s the perfect errand runner, and getaway car all wrapped up in one.