Kia Motors known as Kia, in Korean 기아자동차, is the second largest car manufactorer in South Korea with 1.6 million cars sold in 2009. The work "Kia" comes from two old korean words, "Ki" which means "to come out" and the letter "a" which means Asia, so the name would be literally translated to "The rise of Asia". Kia employs 42 thousand workers worldwide, with Hyoung-Keun (Hank) Lee, being in charge as CEO.
To update its look and make it more popular in the European and American market, Kia hired the german Peter Schreyer, winner of the design award of federal Germany, to reinvent a new car appearance. And so he did in 2007 Kia launched their new "Tiger Face" design which was thenquicjly adopted to each of Kias car to make it more distince and more beautiful.
It was officially founded in Seoul, South Korea, in 1944. It was originally a steel tube and bicycle part manufactorer, and known as Kyungsung Precision Industry. In 1952 it changed its name to Kia,in 1957 started building motorcycles, in 1962 started building trucks, and in 1974 it started building cars.
In 1986 it started a partnership with Ford, who later wanted to buy it when the company bankrupted, but it got outbid by Hyundai, which later made Kia its partner, but still owns 40% of it.
Although I did not know that Kia was such a big car company, I am still not impressed. What I am impressed with is the fact that Kia is the Sponsor for the Slovakia National Football(soccer) Team. I hoped that Slovakia would have a better sponsor, but even Kia will do for a country with a bit more than 5 million inhabitants. Im not a big fan of Kia cars and could generally do fine without them but somehow I secretly wish that they will get the potential to beceome a quality car company and succeed. Kia is in my oppinion one of those car companies that will lay still and when its ready it will pounce on the competition and weaken it severely.
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