I'll Never Repeat the Mistake of Buying a Kia

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by bustercougar

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Shown here is a 2014 Kia Soul owned by my fursona as it is self destructing. In real life, it might as well have exploded like shown in the drawing.
I colored this one in with art pencils, deviating from using art paints which was used on my earlier drawings.

In April of 2022 I purchased a 2014 Kia Soul for $7,300 from Carisma Auto Sales in Tampa, Florida. Carisma Auto Sales is near Busch Gardens and a block away from Interstate Two Seventy Five. Looked like a nice little practical car at the time I chose to buy it. But little did I know what a disaster on wheels that car would be.
I never threw away the repair receipts on that car, so here's the run down.
After I had the car for two months I noticed I had to add a quart of oil every one thousand miles. When I complained to the owner of the car lot he told me that was normal for a Kia Soul. I thought at first the car lot owner was lying to me.
But when the starter relay went bad a week later, the mechanic I usually take my car to told me, "They weren't lying to you. But Carisma should not have sold that car".
He said the earlier model Kia Souls have a reputation for excessive oil consumption, and sometimes beginning as early as twenty thousand miles.
The motor began intermittently shutting down while I was driving a couple of weeks after the mechanic replaced the starter relay. The mechanic found it to be caused by corrosion where the main wiring harness plugs in through the firewall. He said the corrosion caused electrical contact to fail when it reached operating temperatures under the hood.
The air conditioning quit less than three months after I bought the car, which was well into summer. The mechanic told me the compressor had failed and it would cost $1,400 to get the air conditioning working again. I didn't have the $1,400 so I did without air conditioning all that summer.
Sometime before Halloween, the transmission started jerking hard between shifts. The mechanic diagnosed it to be a bad valve body. I had to borrow $2,800 from a relative to get the valve body replaced under the transmission.
Before New Year's Eve that year, there was an overnight electrical drain that left the battery dead by morning. After the holidays, the mechanic diagnosed the problem to be a short in the alternator. It had also drained the battery enough to where it would no longer hold a charge. Replacement of the alternator and battery cost me $660.
In March of 2023, the left rear power window quit working while in the raised position. I didn't get it fixed right away.
In early 2023, the oil consumption got worse to where spark plugs wouldn't last long before they fouled out. The mechanic reminded me changing spark plugs were an easy do it yourself job being that he knew I'd have to replace them often. And my landlord was okay with me changing spark plugs at the house. She just didn't want me replacing actual auto parts on the driveway, in the garage or in the yard. I changed out fouled spark plugs enough times in that car, I remember the spark plug number by heart, NGK 93175.
In June of 2023, the head gasket blew, which cost me $1,950 to get it repaired, plus a $95 tow bill to get it to the shop.
In November of 2023, the steering broke loose and stopped working. I was lucky I was backing out of the driveway when it happened instead of driving in traffic. I was also lucky to find out Kia had a recall on that one. But it did cost me $75 to have the car towed to the dealership for the recall repair. The failure was a rubber steering coupling that rotted out and disintegrated.
In February of 2024, the car died while crossing the Howard Franklin Causeway Bridge over the Tampa Bay. It cost me $480 to get the car towed off the bridge and to the shop in Tampa. At the shop, the mechanic diagnosed the crankshaft position sensor to be at fault. The repair bill was $200.
In May of 2024, the power window in the driver's door stopped working half way up. It wouldn't go up. It wouldn't go down. When it rained, I had to close the door against a piece of clear visqueen to keep the rain out. I was going to get the two power windows fixed, but the car went back to intermittently shutting down again. This time it was a wiring problem that took the mechanic four hours to find it. The money that could have gone to repairing the power windows had to go to paying a $735 diagnostic and repair bill.
In August of 2024, I finally had the two power windows on the left side repaired. The bill for that one was $1,050.
At the end of August, I attended Furry Megaplex 2024. Believe me, I had my fingers crossed the car would make it there and back. It did without any trouble.
Later in the year, the oil consumption started getting bad enough to leave a cloud of white smoke where I had to accelerate into traffic, and places where I'd step on it to beat a yellow traffic light before it turned red.
In January of 2025, the front left suspension spring broke. The car would go down the road looking like it was in a nose dive, and felt and rode like it too. That repair bill was $590.
In April of 2025, the temperature sensor went bad causing the cooling fans not to come on and making the motor overheat while waiting at traffic lights. The repair bill for that one was $250.
In May of 2025, the air conditioner compressor that failed three years earlier seized up. Lucky for me, I was back in Tampa when it happened. I had earlier been taking trips to Lake Mary and Longwood to visit relatives. I couldn't drive the car with a belt squealing on a seized pully, so it cost me $80 to have the car towed to the shop. I did have the money to get the air conditioning working again, which was $1,400. So I decided to have the mechanic repair it. With summer a month away, it felt good to have the air conditioning working again. And here in Florida, it had been a very hot summer this year.
Two months after the air conditioning was fixed, it went down again. It was the end of July. It wasn't the compressor this time. The cooling core inside the dash sprung a pinhole leak and let the freon out. It was going to be a dashboard out job to fix it, costing $1,300, and I didn't have the money to do it, so I had to sweat my ass off without air conditioning again.
A week after the air conditioning quit, the car started blowing light bulbs and fuses left and right. Windshield wipers would run in fast motion. When I drove the car to the shop and told the mechanic what was going on, he knew right away what was wrong. The voltage regulator had failed.
The mechanic advised me, "That has to be addressed immediately. If you keep on driving it that way, it will eventually blow the computer and everything else with it".
In a 2014 Kia Soul, the voltage regulator is part of the power control module. The power control module had to be replaced at a cost of $1,600. I didn't have the $1600, but my cousin in Longwood invited me over for the weekend and said she'd loan me the $1600. Without the car running, I had to travel by train. I rode an Amtrak train to Winter Park, then boarded a Sun Rail train to Longwood. From there, my cousin came by and picked me up.
After the weekend, I was able to pay the mechanic in Tampa to get the car repaired. I finally had the car going again.
Furry Megaplex 2025 was less than a month away, and I had my heart set on attending. This would be my first time attending since I joined the fandom a month and a half ago.
Tuesday of last week, I noticed a noise that sounded like the motor was running low on oil. I immediately pulled over and shut the motor off. I check the oil and it was up to the level where it should be. I was afraid to continue driving the car sounding that way. So I made a call to have it towed to the shop, which was $70. At the shop, I explained to the mechanic how it sounded like the motor wasn't getting enough oil pressure. That's when the mechanic told me about Kia Souls having a reputation for connecting rod bearing failure. But he did assure me it might still be nothing more than a bad oil pump, and replacing it would be about $1,200. He said it might just be a clogged oil pick up screen, so there's no need to worry just yet.
The mechanic told me, "I can get to it tomorrow. Check back with me Thursday morning".
Thursday morning of last week in his office, I received the bad news.
The mechanic told me, "When I got the oil pan off yesterday, I decided to check the play on the connecting rod bearings with a dial indicator before jumping right in to replacing the oil pump. On the connecting rod bearings for cylinders two and three, I can actually feel the play by hand. That's when I knew checking them with a dial indicator would be pointless. Whether the oil pump is okay is irrelevant at this point. The motor is well on it's way to catastrophic failure".
I asked, "How much money am I looking at to fix this?"
The mechanic told me, "Your car needs another motor. I can replace it with a remanufactured motor for around $9,000.
I told him, "Keep the car. That thing's been a money pit since the day I bought it. As far as I'm concerned, make it disappear".
The mechanic asked me, "Is the title on that car free and clear?"
I said to him, "I paid the car off in full a year ago. I don't owe Carisma a dime on it".
The mechanic said to me, "If you want to sign the title over to me, I won't charge you for the inspection work I did. We can call it even. You won't owe me anything".
I said, "Fair enough".
I took a bus back to the house and got the title. Then I caught a bus to bring the title to the shop. At the shop, I signed the title giving the mechanic legal ownership of that wheeled catastrophe that had been draining my wallet for the past three years.
So much for attending Furry Megaplex 2025. I missed out on that.

I am presently without a car for now. But I can still take a bus to and from work.
There are the trains I can take to go visit my relatives in Lake Mary and Longwood during my leave time off between contracts where I work.

Meanwhile, I'll save up for another car. My job pays well, and with that Kia Soul no longer draining my bank account it shouldn't take long to save up for a decent car.

And I kid you not. I swear. I will never buy another Kia again. I am avoiding that brand like the plague. That was the first Kia I've owned, and it was the last Kia I'll ever own.

Here is a sobering update. Today is Thursday/4/September/2025. Today, it is a week ago to the day I signed the title of that clatterbox Kia crapbucket to the mechanic.
Last night, I went through all the repair receipts I've saved during the time I owned that car and added up all the repair costs. The money I dumped into that piece of shit on wheels, including the $7,300 I paid Carisma Auto Sales for it three years ago and the high dollar interest on the in-house financing totaled to a few hundred dollars more than I can buy a brand new 2025 Toyota Corolla. This morning, I went to a Toyota dealership and priced a base model Corolla for around $25,000 before tax, tag, and other fees.

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