Kia Motors’ Rio wins major design award

Kia Motors’ Rio

Kia Motors has won the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), one of the world’s three biggest design awards.

Sold under the different name of the Rio overseas, the automaker’s popular compact car Pride won a bronze in the transportation category at the 2012 IDEA organized by the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA).

The IDSA praised the car for being “extremely attractive with a fresh feeling of sportiness.”

“(It is) a car that people will want to buy for its looks as well as its environmental credentials. In the 2012 model, Kia created a car that answers consumer demand for more quality, more choice and a more attractive, exciting design,” the organizer said in its official website.

With its various models the nation’s second largest automaker has now won in all three major design competitions ― IDEA, iF and Red Dot.

Kia said winning in the major design competitions is meaningful as it proves the world now recognizes the automaker’s strategic emphasis on design.

“We believe the world now recognizes our devotion to design given the fact that we have won all three major design awards,” a Kia official said. “Along with product quality, our cars now have competitiveness in design as well.”

Since 2009 Kia has won the Red Dot awards consecutively ― the Honorable Mention with its box-type vehicle, Soul in March 2009, was the Winner with Venga, a strategic car for the European market, in 2010, Best of the Best with the K5, a mid-sized sedan, and the Winner with the SUV Sportage R in 2011 and also Winner with both compact car models, Morning and Pride this year.

The automaker also won several awards in iF for three years in a row ― Winner with Venga in 2009 and Winner with the K5 and the Sportage R in 2010 and Winner with the Morning in 2011. <The Korea Times/Kim Tae-jong>

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