Start with what the Kia Bongo is: a Van / Pickup truck, built from 1980, in the age of turbocharging and the first electronic engine management. What it meant takes a little longer.
The background
The Kia Bongo (Hangul:기아 봉고), also known as the Kia K-Series or Kia Besta, is a cabover pickup truck and van produced by the South Korean automobile manufacturer Kia since 1980. The Bongo was first launched in 1980 under the name Bongo. In 1997, the third generation Bongo Frontier was launched. As of 2004, the Kia Bongo was in its fourth version, confusingly sold as the Kia Bongo III. "Frontier" was dropped from the name with this revision.
Under the skin
The record carries the shape — a Van / Pickup truck. The engine, output and weight have not yet reached the open record, and MotorJury does not guess at them.
Where it sits
In the Kia line-up the Kia Bongo has a clear place: it handed the line to the Kia Pregio (for Besta); the factory was Gwangju (Kia Design and Manufacturing Facilities#Gwangju Plant. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Dodge Ram, the Audi Quattro, the Mercedes-Benz G-Class. Its Kia stablemates include the Kia K5 (Optima) and the Kia Magentis.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Kia Bongo — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.