Dongfeng Yueda Kia Pride Hatchback With Black License Plates In China

A Kia Pride hatchback with black license plates, seen in the suburbs of Beijing. The China-made Pride was painted in light gold, a popular color in period. It was clearly still used and in reasonable shape for its age.

The Kia Pride was one of the first affordable cars on the Chinese car market. The Chinese name was 普莱特, Pulaite, a literary sound-translation of Pride.

Production began in 1997 at Jiangsu Yueda Auto Works under a license deal with Kia Motors. In 1999, this formally became the Yueda-Kia joint venture. In 2002, Dongfeng bought half of Yueda’s share. It then became a 3-party joint venture called Dongfeng-Yueda-Kia.

Production of the Pride ended in 2003. Over the next two decades, Dongfeng-Yueda-Kia launched dozens of Kia-branded cars on the Chinese car market, some of them only-China models. In 2022, in a reverse of history, Dongfeng withdrew from the joint venture and sold its shares back to Yueda. So once again, the joint venture is called Yueda-Kia.

This exterior is totally standard, from the alloy wheels to the mirrors to the non-darkened windows. It is really rare to see a Pride in this shape.

The interior has some upgrades. It has a double set of seat covers, a steering wheel cover, a new radio-CD player, and a Bluetooth-phone connector. This connector went into the cigarette lighter-socket and connected via Bluetooth to the audio system and phone.

This tiny cars were surprisingly spacious, as they didn’t to carry much luxuries. The Pride was used as a taxi in many cities. Note the Roewe 750 in the background.

Note the obligatory fog light, attached to the bumper on the left.

The China-made Kia Pride was powered by a 1.4 liter four cylinder gasoline engine, mated to a three-speed automatic (!) or five-speed manual, like in this car.  The 1.4 had an output of 75hp and 120nm. Top speed was 140km/h and 0-100 was gone in 10.4 seconds.

The last year the Pride was officially sold at the dealer was in 2004, with price ranging from 59.800 yuan to 89.000 yuan.

The characters say ‘悦达起亚’, Yueda Kia.

The famous black license plates were issued to foreign owned companies from the 1980’s to the mid 00’s. These companies could buy a car locally or import one. There were no limits on the number of cars or on price or on engine type. The numbering started at A·00001 and then up. So the lower the number the older the car. This Kia Pride has 京A·18707. Each province and municipality had its own black-license plate program.