Model years › Kia Rio

2013 Kia Rio

Complaints about this year name service brakes far more often than the model's other years — 14% of them, about 34× the usual rate of 0.4%.

NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.

What the complaints were about

• car started — 7.2% of this year's complaints, against 0.6% across the model's other years (11.1×). Owners wrote it as: car started, smoking, restarting.
• help — 11.1% of this year's complaints, against 3.2% across the model's other years (3.4×). Owners wrote it as: help, found out, gone, metal.
• good — 8.5% of this year's complaints, against 2% across the model's other years (4.3×). Owners wrote it as: good, weekend, coming out, jump.

Words owners used for the same problem are counted together, so a fault written four different ways is measured once. Grouped by which complaints they appear in, not by a list anyone wrote in advance.

Also unusual this year

• brakes hydraulic — 14% of complaints, 34× usual
• hydraulic however — 10% of complaints, 26× usual
• amount time — 10% of complaints, 26× usual

What owners wrote

notification of NHTSA Campaign Number: 23V652000 (Service Brakes, Hydraulic) however, the part to do the recall repair was unavailable. The contact stated that the manufacturer had exceeded a reasonable amount of time for the recall repair. The manufacturer wa…

while driving at various speeds, there was smoke coming out from underneath the hood. The contact stated that the failure also occurred while the vehicle was parked. The vehicle was taken to the dealer, where it was repaired under NHTSA Campaign Number: 23V652…

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.

Recalls for this year

• 23V652000 SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC Fixed free of charge.

Own a 2013 Kia Rio? What happened to yours?

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How this was worked out

Every year of the Kia Rio was compared against its own history rather than against other cars, which removes popularity and age from the answer — a common car draws more complaints at equal reliability, and an older one has had longer to accumulate them. A year is flagged when it drew at least 2.5× this model's median and at least 50 complaints.

This is a fault record, not a review. Nobody files a federal complaint to say the car was fine, so it shows what tends to go wrong — not whether owners liked it, and not whether it is a good car.

Source: NHTSA complaints, recalls and investigations, retrieved . Look this vehicle up directly on NHTSA's site to check anything here.

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