SsangYong will soon be called KG

Things have certainly not been going well for SsangYong in recent years. The company had poor financial results for years in a row and the previous parent company Mahindra & Mahindra was reluctant to invest even one euro, Indian rupee or Korean won in the slowly capsizing brand. SsangYong seemed to find a savior in Edison Motors, but that club also pulled its hands off the brand. For a while it seemed that SsangYong Motor was over, but in the middle of last year the Korean KG Group presented itself. KG Group took over SsangYong and is prepared to invest heavily in it, but the new owner does not want to keep the SsangYong brand name.

At an event held in Korea, Kwak Jea-sun, Chairman of SsangYong, announced that SsangYong Motors will be renamed KG Mobility from March 2023. The cars will be branded ‘KG’. According to Jae-sun, the name SsangYong has built up a “painful image” that it hopes to get rid of with a name change.

It is not the first time that the company has undergone a name change. SsangYong stems from two companies that merged into Ha Dong-hwan Motor in the 1960s. That company was taken over by the SsangYong Business Group, which then renamed the car brand to SsangYong Motor. That later came into the hands of Daewoo Motors and the Chinese SAIC, among others. The Indian Mahindra became owner in 2010.

SsangYong Torres

SsangYong’s (or actually KG’s) latest model is the Torres, which should also be launched in the Netherlands this year with an electric powertrain. If that party continues, the Torres will be called KG Torres here. Incidentally, there is also a smaller electric SUV in the barrel.