Was Kioti ever made by Kubota?

[KiotiKevin]

Hi Guys,
I had a conversation the other day with my dealer similar to the heading Re: 'Was Kioti ever made by Kubota?' He has been in the business for about 30 years. He tells me that the same people who created and produced Kubota during the Second World War had left the Company to start their own(Daedong). Hence their inception I believe is 1949. It certainly would be worth researching.

Kevin

 

[KiotiJohn]

This is another of those "urban myths" that I've already ruled out. Keep in mind that the Daedong Corporation was started by Koreans, not Japanese as in Kubota. One other version of this story is that Japan had a "cultural exchange" program with Korea and Kubota trained the Daedong people in making tractors, which also is a myth. There is nothing more to the story than that Kioti made their tractors to look similar to the Kubotas, but they have never been nor are they now connected to the Kubota corporation. Just because the dealer has been in business for 30 years doesn't mean he can't be susceptible to rumor and inuendo. Kubota only came to this country about that many years ago, and Kioti around 1985. I don't know why people need to see some connection between these two fine tractor makers, but it's clear to me that it's all in their minds. John

 

[Cliff_Johns]

The first Daedong made tractor was introduced in 1968 according to the Daedong web site..
Cliff

 

[DMB]

Here's an interesting aside to this discussion from last Saturday's visit to my local Massey Ferguson dealer. They had taken a Kioti LK2554 in on trade. I looked at it briefly and remarked to the sales guy I was talking to that I had heard that Kioti is a good product. He told me they took the LK2554 in on trade wounded. It had a cracked cylinder head. He went on to say that they had replaced the head on the Kioti with a Kubota piece. All that was required was a minor modification to a water passage and it went right on. I said no more because this guy seemed to know his stuff and I didn't get the impression he was prone to fantasy or fabrication. Still I didn't know quite what to make of his story. I've heard Daedong copied some designs from Kubota though I've never gotten any clear picture of what kind of circumstances this was under. I've never thought there was any kind of corporate connections between the two.
DMB

 

[KiotiJohn]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( The first Daedong made tractor was introduced in 1968 according to the Daedong web site..
Cliff )</font> My distant research agrees with this, and also that Daedong produced their first water-cooled diesel engine in 1949 for marine use. They had mainly been in the marine diesel engine business and expanded to include farm equipment in the 60's. Many very large ships carry Daedong engines that power the electric drive trains. John

 

[virgil]

I did not have anything to do with this machine in mineralwells. I have not seen it, and I,m not good enough on the computor to find it.
There are a lot of folks around here who see an orange tractor and think that it is the "other orange machine".
Even some of my old repeat coustomers still call a Kioti a Kubota... $#@%&#
But then some folks call a pickup a truck.!!!
Kioti is Kioti as we all know.
Kubota is Kubota.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to own a KIOTI.
I wonder if the Long and Farm Pro dealers have the same challenge going with their blue machines? Blue = New Holland.

 

[Steve_Miller]

Is it relevant, I changed the oil in my Yard-Pro ride-on lawnmower the last weekend and I had new oil filter that I never used from my wife's old 93 Dodge Shadow (which is long gone now) kicking around the garage. I had gotten a new filter for the Yard-pro from an autoparts store down the road and I compared them and guess what, they were identical. Did dodge copy yard-pro? I think this is just like a lot of things, you can buy off the shelf parts and design around them. Was this post relevant? No but it makes for some reading and wasting my workplace time. Gotta go its dinner time.

Steve

 

[bandit67]

I remember hearing (14 years ago when I lived in Connecticut) that Kioti was a less expensive division of Kubota. It seemed to be information that was making its rounds throughout the local tractor world, and came from a Kioti dealer.

For years I thought that to be the case after hearing other local folks talk about it, until I began to do a little research on Kioti and found that it is a Korean company (Daedong), while Kubota has always been Japanese.

That right there tells me that I was hearing an "urban legend" that was probably started by a few Kioti dealers to help sales when Kioti was not very well known to the general population. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif That was also at a time when Japanese products were believed by many to be superior to any other country's competing products, so I guess any advantage a salesman could get by claiming a product's association to a well respected company was a big help in getting a sale. Obviously, there were more folks around the country claiming Kioiti's link to Kubota, if we're still hearing about it to this day.

 

[slowzuki]

I guess the other legend that floats around is some of the very first Kioti's imported here, the ones that look like B6000's used repaired outdated moulds bought from Kubota.

If so, the story re the cylinder head could be true.

Kioti's have been sold in Canada quite a while, there are models from the 80's for sale in the equipment trader .

 

[KiotiJohn]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Kioti's have been sold in Canada quite a while, there are models from the 80's for sale in the equipment trader . )</font>
They have been sold in the US since 1985. John