Good read
http://www.motortrend.com/features/c...kia_manifesto/

 

Those guys have been really pushing their quality up recently and are building some very competitive cars. Good for them because Japan has really been slacking.

 

About 1.5-2 years ago, I said to a small group of friends, who were all auto enthusiasts, that if Hyundai would sell a Genesis coupe powered by their 5.0l V8 mated to a a manual transmission, I'd be in line to buy one. I guess they never did to this day so my money went to Ford for a Boss 302

Too bad. I do believe that the quality of their products are the rival of the best in the industry. It's just the type of vehicles that I buy is unavailable in Hyundai-KIA line up. Who knows, maybe in the far future I'll look again.

 

I work with a few people have have bought them a few kia and hyundais and they have been so unhappy.

 

I know few people (both co-workers and friends outside work) who owned or still own a Hyundai (Sonata, Elanatra, Accent, Tiburon ... all older models). Nobody had any major issues with them.

 

My neighbor has the little SUV/Crossover 4x. Don't know the model. Think its an 08. But the front end bearings were shot in about 20k. She doesn't take it off road.

 

WHo takes SUVs off-road these days?

 

I think this is a short time incrase. I think in about three years or maybe just another 2two model years we will see a big decrease. People are trying out the new players and I feel they will see what I did when I went and looked. It just might take a lesson or two.

 

My wife and I bought a used 2004 Kia Sorento EX 2WD with the V6 in it back in 2007. Paid $13k for it and it only had 38,000 miles.

That thing was a very fun vehicle. It could tow our boat with no issues. Got OK mileage and most of all, my wife loved it.

As time went by, we developed some electrical gremlins. Since we had bought it from my brother in law, we took it to him and he took it to the dealer to be fixed. The A/C would sometimes work, the clock would pulse and fade and the transmission would drop out of O/D like the button had been pushed. two weeks later and over $5k in work done to it, it was fixed. For awhile.

By the time we hit 55K miles, those electrical gremlins came back. Just affecting different things this time. It wasn't a big deal though, so we never worried about it. Then, at 58k, the wife couldn't use drive through car washes anymore. Water would come in through the moon roof.

Later on, while researching on this and other little issues we were having, I discovered that the Kia Sorento was notorious for developing engine compression issues around 65k. Having 68k on it, I did a compression test. This test showed a significant drop in pressure on two adjoining cylinders. We traded it in two days later on a new 2011 Nissan Frontier CrewCab 4x4 SL. The Kia was paid off and they gave use 10k for it. We drove that Kia and enjoyed it and got very close to what we paid for it in trade.

The moral of this story? Kia has improved quality wise by leaps and bounds. Much faster than what it took Hyundai. Kia's reputation today is falsely inflating the value of their earlier vehicles. If a consumer doesn't become informed about the years and models, they could get themselves into an earlier Kia that has issues.