Yahoo Autos Kia's History Is Longer and More Colorful Than You Think
With its line of leading-edge EVs—including the just-launched EV3 subcompact crossover—Kia presents as one of the freshest, most modern automotive brands out there. Those cars follow on the success of the Telluride and the Soul, but Kia has a history that goes back a lot further. In fact, the company is currently celebrating its 50th year of building passenger vehicles.
Thing is, no one outside of South Korea seems to have noticed.
This handsome little sedan is a Kia Brisa. Launched in 1974, the Brisa was the very first four-wheeled Kia, the company's first passenger car. This example was restored by Kia itself to show off the brand's heritage. Along with a T-600 three-wheeled pickup truck, it was displayed in the heart of southern Seoul, Gangnam (yes, like the pop song that just got stuck in your head).
From Bicycles to a People's Car
Kia's early roots stretch back to 1944 as Kyungsung Precision Industry. First a supplier to bicycle makers and then a bicycle manufacturer, the company changed its name to Kia Industries in 1952. With the Korean War and the partition of Korea following so closely on the heels of World War II, life was brutally hard for most Koreans. Bicycles were the first step to getting the country moving again.
The next step was very similar to the story of postwar rebuilding in Japan. With U.S. aid flowing into the country, motorcycles and three-wheeled pickups started being domestically produced. Kia built Honda motorbikes, while three-wheeled trucks like the T-600 came under license from Mazda. This class of little tripod pickups was called sambari, or "three-footed vehicle," and they were so instrumental in weathering the hard times that the Korean government officially declared them a registered cultural asset in 2008.
Mazda would also supply the underpinnings of the Brisa, in the form of the Familia sedan. The two cars are almost identical apart from small styling tweaks, but the Brisa heralded the dawn of Korea's automotive age. Over at Hyundai, the Pony was still a year away as Korea's first mass-produced car. The Brisa wasn't a ground-up design, but it was built domestically of 90 percent Korea-made parts. It launched in 1974, with a pickup truck variant arriving one year earlier.
Equipped at first with a 1000-cc engine producing around 60 horsepower and a four-speed manual, the Brisa was no sports sedan. It was, however, the exact right product for a country just finding its feet again. When the fuel crises of the 1970s hit, the Brisa soared in popularity for its thrifty, fuel-miser performance. It was stoic and hard-working, the kind of people's car that gets things done. And, frequently, the Brisa was the car of choice for taxicab drivers.
Taxicabs and Dictatorships
In the same way that the original Pony is revered enough in Korea to have Hyundai decide to put a version of the Pony-inspired N Vision 74 concept into production, the Brisa is also a cultural icon. It was a common sight on the streets of Seoul through the 1970s and early 1980s, and it got a pop culture boost in 2017 with its starring role in the Oscar-nominated South Korean film A Taxi Driver.
To understand why, a little South Korean political history is in order. At the time the Brisa was launched, South Korea was under the thumb of President Park Chung-hee, a democratically elected authoritarian who ruled for nearly two decades, having suspended the constitution.
He was assassinated in 1979 in the midst of anti-government demonstrations, and almost immediately thereafter came a military coup d'état by General Chun Doo-hwan. Protests against this dictatorship exploded in the city of Gwangju, with troops firing on student protesters. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed, and this massacre is remembered in South Korea with a national day of commemoration every May 18.
It's pretty heavy subject matter for comedy, but 2017's A Taxi Driver manages to weave in a dramatic retelling of this event with brilliant characters and some genuinely funny moments. The movie, which stars a bright green Brisa taxicab (actually a Familia reworked by the prop department) was a box-office smash in South Korea and was selected as the country's entry for the 90th Academy Awards.
This fictional portrayal of a Brisa taxi is based on a real event. Right in the middle of the uprising, hundreds of taxis formed a convoy in support of the pro-democracy protesters, arriving at the government offices to protest the brutal methods being used against the students. It was transparent bravery in the face of a bloody crackdown, and it became part of public fury that burned all the way until 1987, when democratic presidential elections finally returned.
A Long Pause Before Coming to the U.S.
One of General Chun's early acts was to consolidate the country's industry, forcing Kia to effectively stop production of passenger cars in 1981. Instead, the company was only permitted to build light trucks, a situation that continued until the mid-1980s. Eventually, passenger-car production restarted with a few Mazda-based models toward the end of the 1980s, and in 1993, Kia arrived in the U.S. market with the first four dealerships opening in Portland, Oregon.
Hyundai and Kia formed their partnership in 1998, with Kia now selling its own vehicles like the Sephia and Sportage. In 2005, Kia exported its five millionth vehicle, a tally which started with exports of the Brisa to places like Greece and Colombia.
Last year, Kia sold more than three million cars all around the globe. That story begins with the little Brisa, a hardworking people's car, a taxicab that fought for freedom, and the EV3's very first ancestor.
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