There are plenty multipurpose stuffs such as a scanner/printer/fax/phone which does nothing particularly well, and gets spoiled most of the time before you've even went through the user manual, which shouldn't even be needed if you're buying standalones. However the purpose of these Printaxscanphones are meant to save your working space, or USB ports of your laptops, as in there are logics behind its inceptions, just a matter of when, they can finally function well.There are also multipurpose vehicles which were merely vans with extra seats in place of loading space, with a quick marketing tweak of 6 million different combination of seat adjustments, showing people from 6 to 60 doing all sorts of activities with different seat level adjustments, such as Combination 497,502 - Star Gazing 48 degree angle seat recline, or Combination 2,758,223 - Bed Time Story Telling 20 degree flat Daughter seat + 70 degree reclining Mother seat adjustments. Once manufacturers were running out of ideas on how to stuff more combination into their existing fleets, they went to marketers who then decides to mix two supposingly multipurpose vehicles into one vehicle, dubbed Crossovers. Of course creating the vehicle is just one part of the story, the real solidifying of its segmentation came when manufacturers started marketing it, persuading the market to accept what it actually is, such as BMW's deliberate attempt to market the X5+sloping roof as a Coupe by pulling off a stunt of group photo shoot with a bunch of coupes.
Now, coming to the likes of the KIA Soul, they're actually 'soft' crossovers that actually do have some purpose in their conception. For the last hundred years, cars were predominantly designed, manufactured and purchased by man, of which our simple brains could only care about aerodynamically carving through air (low slung coupe or sedan) or huge big foots rammaraging through muds and high enough to do a U-Turn through the road kerbs. Upon realizing that there's actually another gender that drives cars, averaging one to one and a half foot shorter than men, they've always felt 'overwhelmed' whilst behind the wheels. That's the very reason women tend to prefer driving cars which demands a higher position of driving, having a clearer view ahead, or not having a person looking down on at their cleavage from the SUV parked next to them at traffic stops. However there's a natural hindrance to women driving big SUVs that seems to have bug them from the very moment they swam into an ovum, or a mysterious tadpole swam into them (whicever way), and that's their ability to park a car. Hence there's an empty gap in the market for something relatively short, but with a commanding, higher seating position with plenty of usable space in within. That's where the Nissan Qashgai, Polo Crossover, Suzuki SX-4 or Fiat Sedici fills in the market, small, plenty of space, higher driving position and slightly higher ground clearance, it seems perfect for city driving, luggage lugging or looking over into that middleage fat guy's cleavage in the Lotus Elise next to you. And may I say the KIA Soul looks absolutely good, pulling off the Soul Concept styling stunts almost 100% into production trim, they seem to have a perfect formula for this segment. We're looking forward, very much indeed.
