Kia’s celebrating music at this year’s SEMA show, as a follow-up to the brand’s involvement with the inaugural YouTube Music Awards last week. Five new Kia Souls hit the show floor in Las Vegas, and their common theme was music. Kia teamed with such diverse sources as Popular Mechanics, the Vans Warped Tour, RIDES magazine and NBC’s The Voice to create five very different takes on the Soul’s quirky, boxy style.
Popular Mechanics has turned the Amped Soul into a rolling concert venue. The blackout windows and LED lights and twenty-two inch wheels are just the decoration for this sound machine, which has four twelve-inch Infinity subwoofers and JBL Pro Live sound equipment. The B-pillar has been removed on the passenger side to make room for the sound system, while the rear doors are reverse-hinged to provide maximum music projection.
The airbrushed Vans Warped Tour Soul was teased last week, sporting the colors of the Vans Warped Tour, but the full impact of the car wasn’t revealed until Tuesday. Custom fiberglass body panels with Infinity speakers, a slide-out rear barbeque grill and a fifty-inch flat-panel monitor mounted on top of the car turn the Warped Tour Soul into a concert-parking lot oasis…or maybe the car itself could become the event. Look close and you’ll see a Vans-inspired hood ornament, too.
RIDES took the Soul even closer to center stage, turning the car into a mobile DJ booth complete with a stage. The roof was removed, and a diamond-plate stage replaces the rear seats. Pro-grade Pioneer CDJs and a mixer are included, while the passenger seat sports a Maschine Mikro production studio molded right into the dash. The Pioneer audio system belts out the tunes with five amps and two massive subs, as well as a sound bar with four coaxial speakers and a speaker enclosure in the front grille.
As you might expect, The Voice Soul is all about the singers, with the familiar logos and an interior with four coaches’ chairs in the black and red interior. A forty-inch LED TV, Rockford Fosgate speakers and wireless microphone are linked through an iPad Mini for impromptu performances.
RIDES also created the Music Memorabilia Soul, which serves as a rolling music museum that honors the artists who create the tunes we love. Museum items from rock, hip-hop and EDM history have been collected in this car, which is decorated with gold, silver and platinum trim. Plexiglas display boxes around the rear of the car show off items such as a guitar autographed by Slash, a G-Unit speaker with 50 Cent’s signature, a Jimi Hendrix gold album and a microphone signed by John Legend.
