Kia Problems

Of all the technology you’re considering right now, the only one that sounds any real alarm bells is that of the double-clutch transmission. It’s not that Kia’s version of the DCT is worse than many others – nor is it the worst of the lot – but there have been complaints over the operation and lifespan of these units generally. Sometimes the fault is a software glitch, but in other DCTs – particularly the dry-clutch variety – the problems are mechanical and can lead to catastrophic failures.

With that said, it’s also true that Kia in Australia offers a fantastic factory warranty, so you should have no worries for at least the first seven years. It’s also the case that Kia Australia takes its reputation very seriously and is one of the better companies when it comes to sorting out faults and problems with its products. We’re pretty big fans here at Carsguide of the current Toyota hybrid technology, and it’s looking like the new Kluger Hybrid will be just as popular as Toyota’s other hybrid offerings. Perhaps more so as the non-hybrid Kluger can be thirsty.

As for the requirement for premium ULP, when you consider that the Kluger Hybrid will, around the city and suburbs where most of them will spend the vast majority of their lives, use about two thirds of the fuel of the V6 Kluger (maybe even a bit less than that) then the extra cost per litre is more than compensated for by the reduced cost per kilometre. And in case you were worried about Toyota’s hybrid tech, the new Kluger Hybrid comes with up to 10 years of warranty on the battery-pack provided the vehicle is serviced correctly and inspected once a year.

The other thing you might consider is the next-size-down Toyota hybrid, the RAV4. This is quite a spacious vehicle these days and offers excellent fuel efficiency and driveability. It’s cheaper than the Kluger, too. Definitely worth a look. Overall, the broader view is that a petrol hybrid vehicle is more future-proof than a conventional turbo-diesel.

The brand-new Kia SUV for Australia (due for release in October 2021) has finally brought Kia Sportage Apple CarPlay and Android connectivity to all models across the range. Previously, the base-model missed out on these fitments, but the all-new platform extends these features to every model.

All Sportages will now also get digital radio and multi-device connectivity. The base-model S variant gets an eight-inch touchscreen, while the SX and SX+ models have a 12.3-inch screen. The range-topping GT-Line model will get a curved 12.3-inch screen.

It’s really not viable to retro-fit the new Sportage’s system into an older car, and most owners have found that a more cost effective upgrade to a new aftermarket head unit will offer the features they want, including the ability to enjoy Apple CarPlay and Android Auto Kia Sportage style.

What does GUV stand for? Glad you asked. GUV is a relatively new term on the motoring landscape and, in bald terms, stands for Grand Utility Vehicle. The broad view is that it was an acronym first coined by Kia to describe its current-model Carnival on the basis that it was a step up in luxury from the average SUV and, therefore, needed a grander name; literally, Grand Utility Vehicle.

Like a lot of marketing, of course, the name is more or less meaningless when it comes to being an actual descriptor for the vehicle in question. Yes, the Carnival is well equipped and luxurious for a family vehicle, but 'Grand'? Grammatically, there’s also scope to interpret the vehicle as having a grand level of utility which, given its eight-seat capacity and family friendliness it arguably achieves. Beyond that, however, the definition is rooted purely in the imaginations of the marketing department. Searching for more GUV meaning than that is unlikely to expand the sum of human knowledge.

But now that Kia has slipped the genie from the bottle, you can expect to see the GUV tag applied to all sorts of vehicles formerly known as SUVs, both large and small, and both in Australia and globally. It’s also likely that the vehicles to adopt the GUV tag will be high-end versions of more prosaic SUVs, and there’s a good chance that the prestige brands might introduce the term to their brochures as well.

That said, GUV could also disappear without a trace. The same thing happened to Toyota’s AUV (Action Utility Vehicle) tag a few years ago which was applied to variants of the HiLux range. But the AUV moniker has since been reclaimed by the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle industry which builds unmanned submarines to explore the undersea environment.

There’s another reason GUV could disappear from car advertising and marketing: In the US, rising fuel prices have forced older, gas-guzzling SUVs into the driveways of a poorer demographic who can’t afford anything more efficient. At which point, as Urban Dictionary points out, the term GUV was coined to describe the 'Ghetto Utility Vehicle'.

This is precisely why I loathe the typical aftermarket warranties dished up by used-car yards. They are written very carefully to cover the stuff that won’t go wrong, and not cover the things that typically do fail or break. It’s often been said that these warranties are not worth the paper they’re written on, and here’s proof yet again.

What does it matter if the engine failure was caused by a radiator that is blocked, broken, cracked or leaking? The bottom line is that a dud radiator (sold with the rest of the car) appears to have caused the car to overheat and destroy its engine. And yet the fine print of this warranty will allow the warranty company to wriggle out its responsibility to repair an engine it accepted money to cover. The ACCC should get involved in this grubby end of the car trade and sort it out. Now.

As for your friend, I’m not sure what can be done. Allowing somebody with the right legal background to read the warranty might be a good idea. But the used-car dealers who profit from these warranties know the fine print backwards. And I suspect that even if the blocked radiator exclusion hadn’t scuppered her warranty cover, the fact that a previous owner did his own servicing (and therefore, no stamped service book) would have been an alternative get-out for the warranty company. Actually, that’s a thought: If the service book wasn’t fully stamped, should the warranty have even been offered when the car was sold? I’d be asking that of the car-yard.

I’d also be asking who diagnosed the radiator as the problem. If your friend noticed coolant disappearing but not leaking on to the ground, I’d say that was more consistent with a blown head gasket – for which these early Carnivals were infamous. Find out if a blown head gasket is covered in the warranty. If it is, I’d be very suspicious about blaming the radiator. And yes, I’m absolutely suggesting that you’re potentially being lied to about the cause of the engine failure to move the official reason into an area not covered by the warranty. I reckon I’d be having the RACQ (which has a fair bit of clout in these matters) inspect the engine and rule on what caused the meltdown.

Meantime, forget about a $7000 engine. Find a parts recycler (we used to call them wrecking yards) that specialises in second-hand engines and get a good, tested, used engine fitted. Just make sure it doesn’t have the same head gasket problem.

The Stinger is a great car if you like a big dollop of performance with your motoring. The twin-turbocharged V6 engine really packs a punch and there’s not much else around at the price that feels as potent.

But your budget gets you into some pretty impressive vehicles including mid-spec versions of the BMW 3-Series and Audi A4, both of which offer plenty of performance, equipment and pizzazz. It all depends on how you prioritise performance versus luxury and whether you place much value on the car’s badge. If not, then the South Korean Kia Stinger starts to look even more like a match for the European establishment.

The first piece of advice would be to obtain a workshop manual for your car. Within those pages, you’ll find all sorts of valuable information and tips on performing home maintenance. Compared with even the briefest trip to a professional workshop, a good workshop manual will pay for itself over and over again.

As for the rear door panel on your Sorento, the tricky part is finding all the hidden screws and fasteners that locate things like the armrest. Sometimes the attaching screws are hidden in tiny pop-out panels under the armrest, some times the screw will be hiding under a rubber insert in the door handle’s recess. These will usually be Philips-head screws.

Once you’ve removed those screws, it comes down to a gentle game of popping each of the clips that secure the perimeter of the door panel to the actual door. You’ll gain a feel for this job, but be careful; if you’re too aggressive, you might break or snap the little plastic clips which would then need to be replaced before you could re-fit the door panel. A steady but firm force on the door panel, rather than a sudden shock is the best way to achieve this without damaging anything. Once all those clips have been freed, you should find that the whole door panel will be resting on a groove at the bottom of the window. Lift the panel clear of this and you’re done, although watch out for electrical wires that could still be attached to the power windows and courtesy lights.

Kia in the US has copped plenty of flak over the two-litre petrol engine fitted to some Seltos and Soul models. In fact, there’s been a major service campaign undertaken to identify cars with the problem and attend to them. The problem seems to be within a batch of piston rings which were incorrectly heat-treated during manufacture and can lead to excessive oil consumption. In extreme cases, this can lead an engine to run completely out of oil and seize.

But just because that has happened in the US, doesn’t mean the problem is the same in Australia where different batches of engines might be built in different factories. In fact, Kia Australia tells me that there is no recall or service bulletin issued for this problem in Australia.

In any case, if you bought a brand-new Kia and it had this – or any other – problem caused by faulty materials or workmanship, then you’d be covered by the factory new-car warranty anyway.

Before you do anything, take the car to a workshop with the correct diagnostic gear and have it scanned. This process will see the workshop’s computer have a deep and meaningful conversation with the computer in your car, and the result will probably be a fault code(s) that will tell the mechanic exactly what’s going wrong.

Beyond that, you’re merely stabbing in the dark, as limp-home mode can be triggered for all sorts of reasons including dud sensors, poor wiring, a computer glitch, you name it. The fact that it’s an intermittent limp-home situation makes it even harder to diagnose without a computer scan. You cans start to replace components at random to see if they fix the problem, but you’ll probably wind up replacing a whole heap of perfectly working ones before you stumble on to the one that’s playing up. In the meantime, you’ll have spent heaps and wasted weeks.

The NSW Office of Fair Trading has a Disciplinary Action Unit (DAU) which, on the surface, appears to be able to sanction companies or enforce findings by the department. Which leaves me wondering how Kia has managed to brush off that authority by refusing the refund recommended by the department. Perhaps you would be wise to contact the ACCC (the old Consumer Affairs Department) as this organisation has some real teeth.

The question, however, is whether you’ve given Kia sufficient opportunity to fix the problem. Form what you’ve said, that’s probably the case, but all disputes of this nature rely on the car-maker being given every chance to make things right. That said, your frustration is understandable and, even if the problem is eventually rectified, your opinion of the vehicle will probably be permanently coloured.

For the record, plenty of other owners of the Kia Stinger have complained about exactly the same problem, so it appears that it’s a real concern and not one of which Kia could possibly be unaware. I’ve heard of some owners having the sunroof frame replaced and that fixing the problem. So perhaps there’s a tolerance problem in the manufacturing of the sunroof frames. The point there being that replacing the original frame with another one that is out of spec will simply reproduce the same problem. Perhaps that’s what’s happening to your car.

There are two issues here. The first is that an air-conditioning compressor should not, according to your repair person, stop working at 120,000km. That’s probably debatable and would also be a function of how frequently the air-conditioning runs in your car.

The second issue is that, from the way you’ve described it, this happened within days of the factory warranty expiring. At that point, I think you’d be within your rights to contact Kia’s customer service department and have a chat about the timing of this failure. There are no guarantees here, but it’s possible that Kia might offer some pro-rata assistance with the cost of repairs or parts, given the fault occurred just outside the warranty period. Some companies will do this in some cases as an act of goodwill, but don’t go to the bank on it.