Well, personally I don’t really like Kia cars although there are over millions of Kia fans across the world. It forced me to admit there is something special with Kia cars.

Kia (Kia Motors, 기아자동차 in Korean) is South Korea’s second largest automaker and partly owned by South Korea’s largest automobile manufacturer, the Hyundai Kia Automotive Group. Kia was founded in 1944 and being the oldest automaker in South Korea.

Initially, the company was steel tubing and bicycle parts manufacturer in South Korea and later on, the company started to build motorcycles in 1957 and opened the first automotive assembly plant in 1973. From there on, the first Kia car was built in 1974.

Kia entered the US market in 1992 with the first Kia-branded vehicles sold from four dealerships in Oregon in 1994. Some of the famous Kia cars during that time were the Kia Sephia and Kia Sportage.

Although “KIA” in Korean literally means “Rising out of Asia” in English, many car lovers don’t know that Kia was from Korea at their first sight. Until 2006, Kia invited a famous automobile designer Peter Schreyer to design the “Tiger Nose” for all Kia cars. You can see it at the latest Kia Sportage, Kia Cadenza, Kia Soul, Kia Sorento, or Kia Cerato.

The Tiger Nose has indirectly let all the car lovers recognize the new grille as “Kia”. We have to really admit that Peter Schreyer is a wizard in automobile design by looking at his contribution to design the Audi TT and some Volkswagen models. He is just like Marc Jacobs in fashion world.

Why buy Kia Cars?

Well, we hate to praise people but we have to admit that Kia is selling their cars at a very cheap price compared to some other automakers. Other than the car is affordable, one good reason to buy Kia is the accessories are cheap. Over the years, million of Kia cars have been sold, around 1.6 million cars have been sold just in 2009. This make us have to admit that it has something someone loves.

Famous Kia Cars

Since 1990s, Kia had built many famous and reliable cars including the Kia Rio, Kia Sedona (Kia Carnival), Kia Rondo (Kia Carens), Kia Spectra, Kia Forte, Kia Picanto, Kia Venga, Kia Amanti, Kia Borrego (Kia Mohave), Kia Optima, and some of the cars mentioned above.

To join the hybrid cars and electric cars world, Kia introduces Kia Sportage all-electric CUV, Kia Venga, Kia Soul Hybrid, Kia cee’d Hybrid, Kia Ray Plug-in Hybrid, Kia Pop city concept car (Top 10 concept cars at Paris Auto Show) and among others that give better mileage and less or zero emission.

Kia Competitors include Toyota Cars, Ford Cars, GM Cars, Honda Cars, Nissan Cars, Fiat Cars, Suzuki Cars, and Tata Cars.

Since 1990s, Kia has been doing well especially in the US market although there are once the company faced bankruptcy. With the Tiger Nose, we hope to see more great Kia cars in the future time.