SaipaFord Festiva

01

Origins

The car began as Ford's Festiva of 1986 — a Mazda-engineered, Kia-built world subcompact — but its longest life came in Iran: Saipa acquired the Kia Pride version in the 1990s and built it relentlessly as the Saipa Pride, then Saba, then the 111/131/141 family, until 2020. For three decades it was Iran's cheapest and most numerous car, the default first purchase, taxi and dowry item, its crashworthiness a permanent national controversy and its ubiquity absolute — millions built, decades after the design's donors had forgotten it. The Pride's Iranian career is the global car industry's strangest afterlife: a 1980s economy hatchback, preserved by sanctions like an insect in amber, outliving every company that designed it.