2023 Kia Carnival: What to check before buying

Power sliding doors keep closing on hands, arms, and bodies instead of reversing. An adult has to push hard before the door stops, and a child cannot. This category holds 4 injuries, including a finger laceration that needed emergency room care and a badly swollen thumb. Some doors also stick partway, which delays freeing a trapped finger. Other complaints describe a sliding door window shattering while driving with no chip in the glass, a fuel door that will not open, and a power tailgate closing on a person.

The van shuts off in traffic or loses power at highway speed, and the brakes and power steering go hard when it does. Several warning lights may come on, or none at all. Dealers often cannot find a fault without stored codes. Power sliding doors keep closing on people without retracting, and in freezing weather a door cable can snap. Other complaints describe a rear door that reopens on its own, taillights that work only some of the time, and reverse lights that come on unexpectedly.

A strong fuel smell comes and goes, and it can continue even after the dealer finds a leak and replaces fuel injection parts. Another complaint describes the engine shutting off at a stoplight after a long idle. The dash showed an engine-off warning and asked the driver to shift to neutral and restart. A restart fixed it. With only two complaints, this area has no clear mileage pattern, but an engine that stalls at an intersection is a real collision risk.

Middle-row seat belts fail to retract or fail to lock during hard braking, so they cannot hold a passenger in place. One child came fully out of the seat because the belt did not catch. Dealers confirm the fault and say the belts need replacing, but the parts are on backorder, so the vans stay unrepaired while families wait. One failure came at about 30,000 miles. Missing restraints in the row where children usually sit make this a serious injury risk.

These complaints are about child car seats, not the van. One describes a magnetic chest clip that broke apart during a short drive and left small pieces where a child could put them in her mouth. The other describes a harness that loosens after it is tightened, which the seat maker blamed on debris in the adjuster. Neither complaint points to a defect in the Carnival. Shoppers can treat this category as a car seat issue rather than a vehicle reliability concern.

A leaking steering column seal drips oil or fluid onto the driver's floor near the brake pedal. Dealers say the whole column needs replacing and warn that the steering wheel could seize while driving. In one case the van was declared unsafe to drive. Lane Keep Assist and Steering Assist may also switch themselves off. Both complaints end the same way: the replacement column is on backorder and the vehicle is not repaired. One leak appeared at only 3,337 miles.