Coscienzios

Model years to avoid

Kia Carnival

What it says about you

Opinion

A minivan that has been styled to let you pretend otherwise, and you accepted the deal gratefully. The sliding doors are the point. Everyone eventually admits this.

Not measured, not from the data, and offered in fun. Everything below this is not.

6 model years on record, 465 complaints filed.

The years to look at closely: 2025 (battery). Everything else drew a normal number of complaints for this model.

What owners report, and when

Faults that dominated the complaints of more than one model year. Not the same question as which year to avoid — a car can have an ordinary number of complaints every year and have most of them be about the same thing.

  • door 2022, 2023 peak 42.9% of that year's complaints

Every year

  1. 2027 nothing on record 0 complaints
  2. 2026 2 recalls 39 complaints
  3. 2025 battery 178 complaints
  4. 2024 2 recalls 66 complaints
  5. 2023 4 recalls 49 complaints
  6. 2022 6 recalls 133 complaints

What does a Kia Carnival say about you?

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Source: NHTSA complaints, recalls and investigations, retrieved . A year is flagged when it drew at least 2.5× this model's median and at least 50 complaints — compared against itself rather than against other cars, so popularity and age do not decide the answer.