All-new Rio media art show

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Hello everyone! After the Frankfurt Motor Show review, I would like to share some short, exciting news. Yesterday morning, the all-new Rio (called Pride here in Korea) was officially launched in Korea.

During the launching show, the Rio 4-door and 5-door were launched. To my disappointment, the 3-door was not included in the launching plans. Because sedan-like cars are more popular here in Korea. It would probably be difficult to expect the 3-door to be introduced here. I personally prefer 2-door coupe and 3-door hatchback body types. So it will be fun to drive the 3-door’s 1.6GDI engine and six-speed manual transmission.

The theme for the all-new Rio Korean launching show was media art.

I’m not familiar with this particular area of art, but Nam-June Paik, a well-known Korea-born media artist, made it more popular. There were many media art pieces around the show, which I enjoyed seeing. I would like to share the some pieces that I thought most interesting:

The Rio launching event started with a countdown video and a speech from President Sam-Ung Lee. He talked briefly about the history of the Rio (Pride), how it has evolved for 20 years since the first-generation introduced in 1987 and we now have the fifth-generation Rio.

In fact, the Rio is the most meaningful model to Kia among it all line-up. In late 80s, it was Kia’s best seller car and Rio was a symbol for “small car” in the Korean market for a long time.

After the key-note speech by president, there was a short promotional video for the Rio, followed by a presentation from the design team manager, product development team manager and chief of Korea Domestic marketing. Here’s the video clip of the promotion film.

I’ll discuss the design and product development of Rio in more detail in a future blog post through test drive.

One piece of exciting news that I’ll share with you now is that KARA, a popular K-pop girl group in Asia, is in the online promotional film. Although the video is in Korean, I think you’ll enjoy watching the video below, especially if you are a fan of K-Pop.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaS0jBgZkGY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRT-1vD-7og

The last part of launching show was a photo session for the journalists and the Rio (or Pride)’s launching show ended with great success.

I expect to see many all-new Rios on the roads of Korea. In a few days, I’ll post a detailed review of the all-new Rio’s driving experience on Kia BUZZ, so stay tuned!

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