The name Kia means “rising up” and the Kia company started life in 1944 manufacturing steel tubing and bicycles in Korea. In 1957 Kia produced its’ first scooter.

Kia History

Then in 1961 it started manufacturing the C-180 motorcycles which quickly grew to become very popular. The first Kia combustion engine rolled out of the factory in 1973.

What followed was an era of collaborations and manufacturing cars on behalf of several leading car makers in the world. For instance in 1974 Kia began building the Peugeot 604. What followed in quick succession was manufacturing of the Fiat 132.

But the world really started noticing the Kia Motors name in 1991 when it was announced that they would move into the US market and would start selling their Sephia Compact Sedan. This was followed by the wildly successful Sportage. Kia by July 199y was selling its’ 50,000th car in the United States. A remarkable feat in such a competitive market crowded by every leading world car manufacturer you can think of.

The secret of Kia’s success is that the company engineers had always been extremely skilful in creating very tough and reliable engines. This was put to the test when a comparison was made with Toyota and both vehicles were driven for 200,000 miles and then the engines were carefully examined to see where most of the wear and tear was. The results shocked the world. The Kia Sephia still had 81 per cent of the engine within factory tolerance while the Toyota Corolla could only manage 66 per cent.

Kia has now been in Australia for 10 years and the latest models are safe and very well built. The names on everybody’s lips these days are the Sorento, Sportage and Rio.