Although in theory the Kia company was formed in 1944, it wasn’t until a new car manufacturing plant was completed in 1973 in South Korea, did it start to build motor cars with assistance from Ford. Even then the cars manufactured were branded mainly for Mazda and Ford. It wasn’t until 1994 that the first Kia branded cars were sold in the USA, but in 1997 a finical crisis meant Hyundai bought a huge stake in this struggling company. Since then with huge investment, Kia has changed its fortunes and certainly here in the UK, its reputation has improved with the introduction of the Kia Ceed a few years ago.
Although the USA has been the birth of Kia, it now has a presence around the world, with the Sportage and Sorrento 4×4 vehicles also getting new respect and build quality has improved. The main reason for not buying a Kia was its residual values, meaning you lost more money on value than you gained buying a cheaper new car. In reality, those buying second hand models, got great value for money once depreciation was lost, although this did not not promote new car sale. The newer models are seeing a reverse of this, although not to the levels of other more established motor car brands, ther 7 year warranty has certainly gone a long was to o give assurance to the brand.
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The Dodge motor company is a North American based and was started in 1900 in Detroit the main USA city of car manufacturing. Astonishingly the Dodge brothers who created the company to make trucks both died in 1920, some saying the second brother died of grief of the first, but at this time they had the second largest sale of automobiles in America. By 1927, even with growth Dodge was no 7th in vehicle sales and was then bought by the Chrysler corporation in 1928. Chrysler now is associated with Fiat and so has plans to develop all its brands including Dodge through the Fiat Chrysler alliance.
The force of Dodge still remains in North America and Canada though had delivered some iconic performance machines such as the Dodge Charger and the Dodge Viper, it never has mage a huge impact in European and Asian markets even though they do have a presence there, in fact Dodge vehicles are mage by Chrysler in 60 countries around the world. Certain models in the UK, include the SRT 10, Journey and the Avenger, the UK current Dodge UK website is very poor in range of vehicle, unless you want a used vehicle. The Dodge Caliber and Nitro were taken out of the UK in May 2010 and even the website gives a Fiat head office for contact info. In fact you would question if Dodge still sold new vehicles in the UK, based on website presence.
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This is the start of writing about Midway Dodge and Kia auto stuff, from lease to salvage!