From Pride To Pride

This year, Kia South Africa celebrates 20 years of selling cars locally. It had a rough start, but 20 years on and the manufacturer is sitting pretty. To celebrate, we were invited on a road trip through the Western Cape, starring the facelifted Sorento and Sedona.

AFTER a flight to Cape Town, we were herded into one of those generic boardrooms all hotels seem to have. But unlike the formal business briefing we’re accustomed to, this one was rather casual. Hilarious even.

When celebrating 20 years of doing business in South Africa, you take a look back at the history of the cars that were on sale and while Kia has a crop of stunning vehicles on sale currently, things weren’t always as rosy.

First up was the unfortunately, or perhaps ironically named Kia Pride. Even the bigwigs couldn’t hold back a grin upon seeing this tragic piece of metal on a big screen again after all these years. The laughs continued straight on through an image of the first-generation Rio and the first generation Kia Sportage. That’s where we stopped, however. Sure, it was rough around the edges, but one might argue that the first Sportage is a bit of a cult classic. It was fairly basic, didn’t weigh much and had low range and an automatically locking rear differential. We tested it exactly 20 years ago in the third quarter of 1998 in the fourth issue of this magazine, where it received three out of five regmerkies.

Now, 20 years later, we can tell you the real story behind the water-crossing photograph that accompanied that write-up.

The photo was shot by founding editor, Jannie Herbst, who told our current editor to drive it through a pool of standing water in a quarry on the outskirts of Randburg. It went swell, right up until the point where the humble Sportage started floating... Luckily, the car battled its way through and lived to off-road another day.

The Sportage nomenclature soldiered on through a dreary second generation, at which point Peter Schreyer stepped in and turned the whole operation on its head. The third generation Sportage remains a stunner and a turning point for the brand internationally.