Hyundai Pony

The Hyundai Pony is a small rear-wheel-drive automobile produced by the South Korean manufacturer Hyundai from 1975 until 1990. The Pony was South Korea's first mass-produced and exported car. It was made in two-door coupé utility, three-door liftback, four-door saloon car, and five-door liftback or estate car body styles. The Pony nameplate remained in use until 2000 on some export versions of the Hyundai Excel and Accent.
Hyundai had already ventured into car production by producing locally built versions of the Ford Cortina under licence from 1968. When the company wanted to develop their own car, they hired George Turnbull, the former managing director of Austin and Morris at British Leyland in 1974. He in turn hired five other top British car engineers, Kenneth Barnett as body designer, engineers John Simpson and Edward Chapman, John Crosthwaite as chassis engineer and Peter Slater as chief development engineer. With Turnbull's experience with the Morris Marina, engines and transmissions from Mitsubishi, platform from Mitsubishi's Lancer, some parts from the Ford Cortina they were already producing, and a hatchback body styled by Italdesign Giugiaro, they developed the Hyundai Pony....