Kia, South Korea’s second-largest automotive manufacturer behind its parent company Hyundai, has been around for years but do you know that there are many facts about Kia that you may never hear of yet?
Although Kia (Korean International Automotive) is an Asian company, it is rapidly gaining market shares in North America. In fact, if you browse Zemotor.com, you will find a lot of Kia vehicles sold in the USA.
In this article, we are going to tell you the 10 little-known facts about Kia.
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Kia is the world's largest sponsor
The UEFA Europa League is the world’s largest professional club football competition, involving clubs from 54 countries across Europe, and attracting a global cumulative TV audience of 980 million across all programming. Kia Motors has been named as a new Official Partner of the UEFA Europa League. The three-year sponsorship agreement commences in time for the 2018/19 season and runs through to the UEFA Europa League final in 2021.
As a FIFA Partner and the Official Automotive Partner, Kia is supplying official vehicles from its wide-ranging model line-up to FIFA and FIFA events and is boosting its brand recognition through various marketing activities and A-board advertisement in the stadiums.
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Kia dominated the Indian car market, becoming the leader in record time
Kia Sonet becomes the highest selling compact SUV in India. Kia Motors registered its highest-ever domestic sales since its entry into the Indian market, with 18,676 units in September 2020. The most significant contributor, Kia Sonet, dominated the compact SUV segment with a total of 9,266 units while 9,079 units of Kia Seltos were sold.
Bookings for the Sonet continue to rise, it currently stands over 35,000 units till now while there is a strong, consistent demand for the Seltos SUV as well. Kia is also aggressive towards making India an export hub with over 70 identified export markets, aiming to trade 50,000 units overseas within the next twelve months.
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World-renowned designer work for Kia
Luc Donckerwolke is a Belgian automotive designer and the chief creative officer at Genesis and Ioniq. Prior to the Hyundai Motor Group, he was the design director at Volkswagen Group's Bentley, Lamborghini, Škoda, and Audi. He joined Hyundai Motor Group in 2016 as chief design officer, where he headed design at Genesis, Hyundai, and Kia in Namyang, South Korea. During this time, he helped establish a new design language for each of the brands and crafted beautiful concepts like the Genesis Essentia and Hyundai Prophecy.
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The Name “Ceed”
Kia Ceed is a popular compact car manufactured exclusively for the European market but its name alone has an interesting fact.
The Ceed is the first Kia vehicle to be designed entirely in Europe and tailored to European customers. To mark the occasion, Kia took the initials of the European Economic Community, EEC, or CEE in several languages and added ED for European Design. Realizing that "CEEED" had too many ‘E's, they replaced the last 'E' with an apostrophe, with 'Cee'd' being the end result. Since 2018, the Ceed name does not include an apostrophe. The initials now mean "Community of Europe, with European Design".
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Car for the movie “X-Men”
Kia transformed its Sorento SUV into an "X-Men" inspired concept car to promote the movie X-Men Apocalypse. The car is modelled after "X-Men: Apocalypse" character Mystique. It was displayed to the public during the Australian Open in Melbourne Park.
Kia Motors also announced details of a new collaboration with Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment to promote X-Men: Days of Future Past on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD and Kia’s sponsorship of the Australian Open 2015. The partnership with Fox saw the unveiling of a special X-Men-inspired all-new Kia Sorento one week before the first major tennis championship of 2015 - with Kia’s ‘superhuman’ brand ambassador, tennis star Rafael Nadal, revealing the car.
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What does the Kia brand name mean?
Kia stands for Korean International Automotive in simple form but it has a deeper meaning and origin. According to Kia Motors, the name "Kia" derives from the Sino-Korean characters "ki" (to arise) and "a" (which stands for East Asia); it is roughly translated as "Rising from the East. They only added the Korean International Automotive to better understand Western countries and overseas clients.
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Kia - first bicycle, first motorcycle, first car in South Korea
Kia began as a simple producer of handmade tubing and bicycle parts. By 1951, the firm had moved on to making complete bicycles and was manufacturing motorcycles by 1957. This natural, steady progression continued with trucks in 1962 and finally cars in 1974. The first car Kia produced was the Kia Brisa which remained in production until 1981. By 1973, Kia had built its first, integrated automobile manufacturing facility, the Sohari plant. Kia’s first export was the Brisa pickup, which was sold in Qatar.
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When did Kia make the first car?
Manufactured from 1974 to 1981, the Kia Brisa was a variant of Mazda’s Familia compact car. Although the Kia Brisa eventually made its way back to the Familia design of Mazda’s source material, drunk with power Kia did something the maddest scientists have only ever dreamed of with the variant first.
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Kia work with the military
Kia began producing military vehicles in the late 1970s for the Korean military and overseas ones, eventually creating Korea's first multipurpose tactical vehicle. Since those first examples rolled off the line, Kia has built 140,000 military vehicles – nine model types with countless variants.
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When Kia entered the US market?
Kia entered the highly competitive US market in 1992 when Kia Motors America was set up. The Sephia and Sportage were some of the models that helped establish the brand in the early days. It is one of the fastest-growing brands in the US after seeing its market share continuously grow for the last 18 years.
The history of Kia is somewhat interesting and always with pride. This is one reason why the brand is rapidly growing in the US and Europe. Visit Zemotors.com to check our inventory of Kia vehicles.