I drove the Soul 4U 'burner' yesterday and came away very impressed. It felt very light on it's wheels and was pretty quick with 'go kart' like handling despite how tall it is. Clutch action is nice and easy but the shifter is notchy and not very precise when you're driving it hard, found I couldn't get it to downshift from 3rd to 2nd on a couple occasions, 2nd just wouldn't engage until I put the shifter back into neutral position and tried again.
Absorbed bumps very well and there wasn't a lot of wind noise either, even on the highway. The 4U has the 'sport' suspension and it did feel really tight, I don't remember having that 'boaty' feeling at all even when cornering fairly hard.
The engine is pretty loud on hard acceleration, which I expected, but overall I really liked this car. Linear steering (felt Mazda-ish, very direct, nicely weighted) came at the expensive of some twitchiness on straight-aways but overall a pretty fun car to drive. The red interior looks cheap in person, the seats are ok and the interior design looks pretty cool.
I drove a Mini before the Soul and the new 3 after it and the while the Soul is obviously a different class of vehicle, I didn't find that either the Mini or 3 severly outclassed it.
I'm surprised others have commented about problems finding one to drive, the salesguy said they have a bunch and they are not selling at all right now.