We purchased a top-of-the-line 2016 KIA Sorrento V6 in fall of 2015. Car behaved excellently until late fall of 2019 when we started noting the "shift-shock" issue that some others have described with this vehicle. Moving from P into D, the transmission would clunk loudly - a hard, mechanical clunk that would cause some vibration in the passenger cabin that was clearly wrong and worrying. This would continue to happen at traffic lights or STOP signs when car was just in D and going from brake to accelerator. My wife took the car to our local Salt Lake KIA dealers and they spun a line about the adaptive transmission system needing to be reset, which they did.
Over the summer of 2020 the problem was substantially reduced - perhaps because of the hot summer weather in SLC. Anyway, around mid-November 2020, the "shift-shock" issue reappeared and I decided to take the car into KIA before the Holidays. However, last December, my wife was about to turn left when the entire transmission seized up and the car came to an abrupt stop in the middle of a busy intersection. My wife moved the transmission into P, stopped the engine, then restarted and tried to shift into D or N, but the car would not budge. Further efforts to bypass the transmission lock to shift into N, even by two different AAA guys, so that the car could be pushed out of the intersection came to no avail. The car ended up being towed to KIA of SLC where it was diagnosed as needing a new transmission and rear differential, which was fixed in a few days and covered by the 10 year/100K drive-train warranty.
My wife was shaken up but totally fine, but it scares me to think what might have happened if the transmission had failed so catastrophically on the freeway at 75mph.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
We purchased a top-of-the-line 2016 KIA Sorrento V6 in fall of 2015. Car behaved excellently until late fall of 2019 when we started noting the "shift-shock" issue that some others have described with this vehicle. Moving from P into D, the transmission would clunk loudly - a hard, mechanical clunk that would cause some vibration in the passenger cabin that was clearly wrong and worrying. This would continue to happen at traffic lights or STOP signs when car was just in D and going from brake to accelerator. My wife took the car to our local Salt Lake KIA dealers and they spun a line about the adaptive transmission system needing to be reset, which they did.
Over the summer of 2020 the problem was substantially reduced - perhaps because of the hot summer weather in SLC. Anyway, around mid-November 2020, the "shift-shock" issue reappeared and I decided to take the car into KIA before the Holidays. However, last December, my wife was about to turn left when the entire transmission seized up and the car came to an abrupt stop in the middle of a busy intersection. My wife moved the transmission into P, stopped the engine, then restarted and tried to shift into D or N, but the car would not budge. Further efforts to bypass the transmission lock to shift into N, even by two different AAA guys, so that the car could be pushed out of the intersection came to no avail. The car ended up being towed to KIA of SLC where it was diagnosed as needing a new transmission and rear differential, which was fixed in a few days and covered by the 10 year/100K drive-train warranty.
My wife was shaken up but totally fine, but it scares me to think what might have happened if the transmission had failed so catastrophically on the freeway at 75mph.
- Martin M., Salt Lake City, US