Lost in the hoopla of awarding the Chevrolet Corvette MotorTrend‘s 2020 Car of the Year was that one of the other podium finishers was the Kia Soul. Although the Soul’s status might come as a surprise to some, those who have been paying attention to the vehicle’s progress through each generation know Kia has been hard at work refining it into a best-in-class vehicle.
This studious effort by Kia became even more apparent after spending over a year with a Soul in our test fleet. It’s more apparent than ever that the Soul is a well-built, spacious, comfortable hatchback that cleverly walks the fence between car and SUV, all the while providing an engaging driving experience. In fact, the Soul sits at No. 2 on our vehicle ranking list of best subcompact SUVs, just below the Subaru Crosstrek. (The Soul straddles the dividing line between hatchback and SUV, and we’ve wavered on where to put [...]
If it wasn’t painfully obvious from our glowing breakdown of the all-new 2022 Honda Civic, we’re stoked about Honda’s new compact superstar. The 11th-generation Civic’s conscious stylistic shift away from the origami edges of the outgoing car to this new, sleekened profile is a welcome move, particularly on the inside. We crawled around in the new Civic as part of the debut proceedings, and we reckon the fresh threads will be one of the redesigned car’s strongest selling points; based on how fabulous the outgoing car was to drive, that’s saying a lot. Here’s what to expect when you get your first in-person peek of the cabin.
We suspect ardent Honda nerds may find the new horizontal, pared-down environment vaguely familiar. If you do, good eye—the new cabin pulls inspiration from the stylish and very adorable Honda e (yup, lowercase) subcompact EV hatch that hums around streets abroad. Really, the 2022 Civic’s interior space is [...]
The fourth-generation Kia Sportage has been around for six years, and the compact SUV is beginning to look rather tired. Compared to the slightly smaller Kia Seltos, larger (and increasingly popular) Telluride, and the all-new midsize Sorento, the compact Sportage is due for an overhaul. That redesign will, apparently, wait another year, as not much has changed for the 2022 Sportage save for a few tech updates and the addition of a new LX Value Edition package.
Forward collision-avoidance assist with pedestrian detection, lane departure warning, lane-keeping assist, driver attention warning, high beam assist, and blind-spot monitoring are now standard across the Sportage lineup. The Sportage LX Value Edition package adds heated front seats, 18-inch dark wheels, and a Smart Key with the push-button start feature to the volume LX trim level.
The tech package for the EX and SX Turbo models gets complimentary map updates, including new [...]
Yakima may not have invented the roof-mounted cargo box, but it continues to tinker with the basic concept. The CBX Solar, the 16.0-cubic-foot CBX Solar counterpart to the lesser Yakima CBX 16 cargo box, advances its cargo-carrying capabilities by adding an integrated solar panel to the top side of the unit. The CBX Solar is capable of supplying up to 36 watts of power by way of two 5-volt USB ports, both of which Yakima hides within the cargo box itself. That’s enough juice to charge small electronics such as cell phones and portable speakers.
Big SunAt $1,299, the CBX Solar stickers for $450 more than the CBX 16, which is no insignificant sum and makes the CBX Solar the most expensive cargo box in the company’s lineup. Nevertheless, we strapped the low-slung CBX Solar to the roof of our 1993 Honda Accord sedan to see how the box performed over the course of [...]
Subaru is not a player in the midsize, full-size, or heavy-duty pickup truck segments. It doesn’t currently offer anything with a bed—today. It wasn’t always that way, though. Once upon a time, there was the Subaru Brat. It was a funky Subaru Leone-based truck that Subaru ultimately pulled the plug on in 1987. Fast forward a couple of years, and Subaru brought the spirit of the Brat back in the form of the Baja compact pickup. Except, instead of the Leone, the Baja used the Subaru Legacy Outback wagon as a base.
Although the rhyming Bs of the Brat [...]
