Kia Brisa

From October 1974 until 1981, Kia Motors manufactured a variant of the second generation Familia as the Kia Brisa at their first integrated automobile manufacturing facility, the Sohari Plant in Gwangmyeong, South Korea. Production originally commenced in 1973 in the form of the Brisa B-1000 pickup truck, but passenger car production (originally as the "Brisa S-1000") only commenced later. Brisa comes from the Spanish/Portuguese word for "breeze". The Brisa was equipped with a 62 PS (46 kW) 1 litre Mazda engine. In October 1975 a 72 PS (53 kW) 1,272 cc engine was added to better compete with the 1.4 liter Hyundai Pony. Production came to an end after the new military dictator Chun Doo-hwan enforced industry consolidation, meaning Kia had to give up passenger cars and focus entirely on light trucks. The original version of the Brisa received a slightly different front end from the original Familia, featuring twin headlights. Later (presumably after the introduction of the 1300 engine) single headlights were used. In total, 31,017 Brisa passenger cars were built. Including the pickups increases the totals to 75,987, of which a total of 1,526 were exported. Exports, Kia's first, began with a shipment of 31 Brisa B-1000 pickups to Qatar in 1975. The larger Grand Familia/818 was also built by Kia with the 1,272 cc engine, originally as the Brisa II and later as the K303.