Ford Festiva
automobile model

The Ford Festiva is a four passenger front-drive subcompact car originally manufactured in South Korea by Kia, under license from Mazda and marketed by Ford from 1986 until 2002 over three generations in Japan as the Festiva. The first generation was also sold as a Festiva in North America, while the first two generations were Festivas in Australasia. The third generation was a badge engineered Mazda Demio and was generally not available with Ford badging outside of Japan.
Designed and engineered by Mazda using the DA platform and B series straight-four engines, the Festiva was manufactured in South Korea by Kia, under license. Sales of the first generation Festiva reached 350,000 in America.
Kia began marketing the first generation in South Korea under license — as the Kia Pride. Australasia and Europe received the first version between 1987 and 1991 as the "Mazda 121". After 1991, Australasian sales began under the "Ford Festiva" name, while European sales continued as the "Kia Pride". Kia ended production of the Pride in 2000.
Ongoing production of the first generation overlapped its second generation, introduced in 1993 and marketed as the Ford Aspire in North America and as the Kia Avella in South Korea and other markets.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18749275. The Library of Congress control number is sh98006689. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1986, 2002, 1987 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ford Festiva” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.