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Comment by wredue | Hacker News Reader

Our caravan has been a pile of shit, which I’m sure anyone who’s ever had a caravan can attest to.

Anyway. We are looking for reliability and imagine my surprise when Kia, of all brands, came out king of generally affordable reliability. Plus their EV reviews reasonably well.

A lot has changed in 10 years for vehicles I guess…

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Kia is always a mixed bag. On the most important fundamentals they produce a good value vehicle. But they are able to reduce prices by cheaping out a bit on drivetrain components. E.g. axles and CV boots that wear quicker, just slightly cheaper parts. If you watch the Munro Live videos when they tear down an analyze the engineering, they often concur with this.

And it's all fine if you drive your vehicle for <150,000km (100,000miles) and then sell or move on, but my experience with them is that after that they start to have mechanical parts issues. Which makes sense because they've effectively optimized for the most common consumer vehicle ownership pattern. But.

I've never heard a good story about a caravan, period! I do sometimes wonder if caravans are particularly crap vehicles for intrinsic reasons, or if targeting families means you have to cut costs which reduces quality (kids are $$$$$$), or if perhaps the driving habits of young families (lots of short trips) are particularly rough on vehicles of that type. Maybe all three conspiring.

IDK about Kia, except that they're doing pretty well on the EV front compared to other legacies. But in general, 10 years is at least one product cycle, so I guess it's not that surprising that reputations-vs-reality mismatches appear on that time frame. It is weird though.

Depends on the model year. The one we bought in 2003 only needed regular oil changes and a new set of tires every few years. We did have to get a rebuilt transmission just before its warranty ran out, but didn't pay a dime for that ("Not a dime? Really?" Yeah, well, I was a trial lawyer before going into tech). The 2013 is still running and other than normal maintenance the only problems we've had are with the sliding door coming off its track and one of the stow-away seats getting stuck. In both cases YouTube saved the day. Don't get me wrong, I really hate the look of that car. It definitely is not an identity statement. But given the astronomical prices of new (and used) vehicles right now, we're probably going to keep it for a while longer. Here's hoping that changes. Soon.

Kia's more or less just Hyundai, these days, isn't it? Like, a Kia Nero (electric version) is much the same thing as a Hyundai Kona.

The problems that were unique to Kia cars were predominantly in the engine and transmission, so it's not exactly a big surprise that removing those two parts means they make better cars.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

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