While it is really cute or ugly depending on whether your glasses are clean or not, I can't believe that the engineers at Kia were not smart enough to wring more than 30 mpg out of this little box!!! Hell, my 2002 Honda Civic got 40 mpg on the highway! 30 mpg is a disgrace and surely embarrassing. Do they think gas is going to stay at $2 a gallon???
I had a salesman I trust (questionable statement, I agree!) tell me a few years ago that the reason KIA can offer such a generous warranty is because they use tried & true power trains from Toyota, Hyundai, etc. where the longevity & reliability is known. Doing that means a brand new KIA may have drive train technology that is five years old - in this case when 30mpg was of stellar performance.
OTOH, the publicity department knows Americans tend to look at the bottom line of the invoice as opposed to specifications such as mpg. If car "A" is $19,999 & gets 30mph and car "B" is $20,999 and gets 37mph, the customer tends to see the "19" in the cost (meaning less expensive down stroke) and the "3" in the mpg (meaning "the same" as the other car). When I worked in the public sector & had to bid vehicles, many on my boards would have the same type of focus even though I could prove with in-house real life experience documentation the more expensive (up front) vehicle was considerably less expensive in the long run. Americans, in my experience, pay much more attention to initial cost as opposed to the actual long term value.
Sorry to be so long winded. Wife drives an '02 Optima SE, currently with
113,000 miles on the clock. Even though it gets 3 to 4 mpg less than my Chrysler Sebring LXi, in the long run it has been significantly less expensive to drive because of a pleasant lack of repair (other than preventative maintenance).Rich
Excellent post - and right on the money.
$2.00 a galleon??? come to the UK buddy. At current exchange rates our fuel works out at $5.93 a gallon (imperial). and diesel is even more expensive. Count your blessings is all I can say.
Finally there are two things in life that are guranteed, Death and Taxes (uk at 15%).
As for the Kia Soul. Really like the car (Kia Soul Shaker) and hope to get one in the near future once things have settled and any bugs have been ironed out. But MPG could be an issue as you quite rightly say.
The Civic is also a smaller car than the Soul, correct?
What would be the best comparisons to the Soul? The Scion xB, the Nissan Cube, maybe the Honda Fit? What's the mileage on those cars?
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