The new Kia Soul urban crossover has been awarded a maximum five-star safety rating in the latest Euro NCAP crash test results.
The Soul’s safety ratings - with scores of 87 per cent for adult occupant protection, 86 per cent for child protection and 86 per cent for safety assist equipment – place the Kia among the safest B-Segment sized family cars.
“The latest Euro NCAP result is a major landmark achievement for Kia. This is a superb follow-up to the five-star Euro NCAP rating achieved by the Kia cee’d in 2007. Soul was designed and engineered to meet or surpass the expectations of European, North American, and global consumers in every respect – including safety,” commented Panu Vainamo, general manager marketing at Kia Motors Europe.
“Kia’s safety engineers developed the new Soul to provide the highest levels of occupant protection in real-world accident scenarios. Our engineers predicted that Soul would achieve a five-star rating in both Euro NCAP and the very different NHTSA tests in the USA. This Euro NCAP result confirms the major advances made by Kia with its latest family car,” added Mr Vainamo.
“The combination of this new model’s many talents, plus the five-star safety rating and the unique Kia five-year warranty (in Europe ), will make the Soul even more attractive to consumers, offering real peace of mind and low ownership costs,” concluded Vainamo.
During the development of Soul, Kia said its engineers initially concentrated on ensuring the car had high levels of active safety with good visibility, responsive and agile handling, and powerful braking to enable Kia drivers to avoid accidents and other everyday motoring hazards.
Every Soul model supplied in western Europe features an electronic stability programme as standard. Fully automatic, ESP is increasingly a ‘proven technology’ in accident avoidance, countering excess oversteer and understeer so the car follows the course intended by the driver. Soul buyers in other European markets can specify ESP as a factory-fitted option. This system comes together with all-speed traction control system and emergency brake assistance system.
Each Soul on sale in Europe is also equipped as standard with dual front airbags, front side and full-length curtain airbags (to protect the occupants in both seat rows ), height-adjustable front seatbelts with pretensioners and belt load-limiters, plus three three-point seat belts for rear seat occupants. In addition, all Soul models can be ordered with optional ‘active’ front seat head restraints.
