Kia began with bicycle parts and was once banned from building cars
Kia, whose name roughly means rising from East Asia, started in 1944 making steel tubing and bicycle parts. It built South Korea's first domestic bicycle, then motorcycles and trucks, and in the early 1980s a government order stopped it building passenger cars entirely. Its return in 1986 produced just 26 vehicles.
The company was founded in Seoul as Kyungsung Precision Industry and took the name Kia Industries in 1952, the year after its Samchuly bicycle appeared. Licensed Honda motorcycles followed from 1957 and Mazda-licensed trucks from 1962. Its first integrated car plant opened in 1973, producing the Mazda-based Brisa, and it also assembled Fiat and Peugeot models under licence, on condition that it exported five cars for every imported kit.
In 1981 the military ruler Chun Doo-hwan forced the industry to consolidate, and Kia was limited to light trucks; no passenger cars were built in 1984 or 1985. Partnered with Ford, it restarted in 1986 and jumped to more than 95,000 vehicles the following year. Budget models such as the Pride, based on the Mazda 121, were sold abroad as the Ford Festiva.
Kia entered America in the early 1990s, selling its first cars from four dealerships in Portland, Oregon. The Asian financial crisis drove it into bankruptcy in 1997, and in 1998 Hyundai outbid Ford to take 51 percent. Hyundai remains the biggest shareholder, with about 35 percent, while Kia in turn holds stakes in some 22 Hyundai subsidiaries. Kia is now the country's second-largest carmaker after its parent, selling over 3.1 million vehicles in 2025.
Design became its declared growth engine. It hired Peter Schreyer as chief design officer in 2006, and he created the Tiger Nose grille. A US$1 billion factory in West Point, Georgia, began production in 2009 and had built more than 3 million vehicles within a decade. In 2021 the company dropped Motors from its name and set a goal of carbon neutrality across its value chain by 2045.
Source: Kia
