File:1979 Hyundai Pony.jpg

English: While Kia was enjoying success with the Mazda-designed Brisa and Saehan (the successor to Shinjin) with the Opel-designed Gemini, Hyundai chose to go a step further, and design its own car, to meet the economic benchmarks of the military dictatorship that needed to deliver economic growth in order to prolong its rule.

Having license-produced Ford of Europe products, Hyundai had some experience with technical aspects, but had zero experience designing a car of its own. It proceeded by hiring George Turnbull, who was leaving British Motor Corporation, as the project manager. The body design was farmed out to Giugiaro Italdesign while the Mitsubishi Saturn 1.2-liter 80-horsepower engine and a 4-speed manual transmission were chosen for the rear-wheel-drive powertrain. First unveiled at the Turin Auto Show in 1974, the Pony entered production in 1975.

Designing a car in-house has two advantages: royalty payments to other manufacturers are no longer needed, and the car can also be exported at will. In 1976, the Pony was exported to Ecuador, and eventually was sold in over 60 countries. Thanks to the export, by the time production ended in 1982 in favor of the second-generation Pony, the production tally was 297,903 - it bears remembering that in the late 1970s, there were only 100,000 automobiles in the entire nation!

While the initial model was a 4-door sedan like this, with a 1.2-liter engine and a 4-speed manual transmission, over the production run more options were added, including additional body styles (5-door wagon, 2-door pickup truck, 3-door hatchback), upgraded 1.4-liter engine, and a 3-speed automatic transmission. The Pony was well adapted to Korean bodies as well as being agile and durable, making it not only the overwhelming favorite of taxi drivers, but also private motorists as well.

This car is to South Korea what the VW Beetle was to postwar Germany, the Citroën 2CV to postwar France, or the Ford Model T to Roaring Twenties America. The VW Beetle parallel is even stronger, as the Beetle is well associated with Adolf Hitler, and the Pony similarly owes a lot to the policies of dictator Park Chung-hee. Additionally, Hyundai's construction executive Lee Myung-bak, later becoming a far-right President in 2008-2013, claims a key role in developing this car.

Very few survive within South Korea, as antique car culture is a fairly new phenomenon, and too many good Ponys were scrapped in the 1980s for being "too embarrassing." The few eccentrics who got their hands on abandoned Ponys and kept them running are the ones who have the last laugh today, as South Koreans reminisce their nostalgic memories that often involve a Pony. Re-importing a Pony from an export market is another option.