Hyundai Recalls 470,000 Sonatas to Replace Engines
By TOM KRISHER, AP AUTO WRITER DETROIT — Sep 25, 2015, 12:30 PM ET

I can certainly identify with this article from my experience during my trip out West a few years ago --- the first car I ever rented was a brand-new (42 miles on the odometer!) 2006 Hyundai Sonata... it looked, sounded, & ran lovely, and performed absolutely **terribly**; at least it did at first. I think they gave me a "lemon" on purpose to reduce their liability risk, since it was a first-time rental for me, and with no insurance... the steering was waaaayyyyy out of allignment (nearly an entire quarter-turn of the wheel!), and the pick-up was totally suck-ish --- I had to literally push the gas pedal 100% to the floorboards to get the engine to feebly respond at all or get the car to move much more than a walking pace. And then once I got out on the interstate, the only way I could get the car to travel at anywhere near a reasonable speed (it absolutely topped out at barely 60 mph!) was to hold the cruise control button on "accel" (like I say, the engine didn't significantly respond to the gas-pedal) for what seemed like forever while the car liesurely took its sweet old time to gradually creep up one mile per hour after another till it eventually reached its enemic top cruising speed on the (fortunately) fairly-empty-at-the-time highway. And initially it drank fuel like there was no tomorrow, too --- the car rental place had started me off with a full tank, yet I'd only gone maybe 75 miles and I had to gas up again from less than half a tank! Oh, the mileage and accelleration did get somewhat noticably better after a day or two, when I guess that the onboard computer kind of "got the feel of the car" and adjusted itself accordingly, but the performance still really sucked, and I felt that it still used far more gas than a fairly small 4-door sedan should have. And it was positively scary travelling back to the rental shop a few days later, too, when I had moderate trouble with the car's underperforming engine's not allowing me to keep up with the myriad of other early-morning-rush-hour-traffic cars on the interstate. At one point, in fact, I was literally afraid to try to pass a big slower-moving box-semi because of the strong prairie winds' blowing the trailer around on the road, since I couldn't speed up fast enough to pass him safely, and so I would have risked getting swung into by the huge swaying trailer that was being buffetted several feet back and forth on the road by the wind as I would have just gradually crept by him at maybe only two or three miles per hour faster than he was going. So I had to just stay behind him all the way back to Omaha, and this --- together with the tightly-packed and still-fairly-swiftly-moving rush-hour traffic in Downtown Omaha --- caused me to arrive back at the rental shop a bit late (oh, the guys there were totally "good about it", of course, when I eventually did deliver their precious parcel of sheet metal without a scratch back to their lot in white-knuckled exhaustion, and shakily explained how I had had to delay my arrival time for safety, and so they didn't charge me any extra for being a bit tardy in returning the car). The whole experience was very upsetting and traumatic, of course, so I can totally feel for everyone else who has had problems with these models.

I have a 2012 Sonata and my engine died with zero warning. It was only at about 14,000 miles, about 18 months after I purchased it. Luckily, it happened on Friday night after I pulled out of my suburban road driveway. I pressed the gas twice to the described horrible knocking sound, tried to turn around in someone's driveway 6 houses down and it wouldn't even move when I put it in Reverse.

I guess I am fortunate that after spending the day trying to diagnose, my dealership confirmed my oil change records, then contacted Hyundai to get authorization to open up the engine. They could not fix from there, so a new engine was ordered under warranty. 25 days later, I had my car back and all they considered was "abnormal wear". I wasn't charged for anything and had a rental covered by Hyundai.

Though, I am now concerned with the new engine as it was early 2013 when I had mine replaced. Not sure I am ready to be on my 3rd engine in a car with only 35,000 miles on it....

This is great info. I have a 2012 Sonata 2.0 turbo, am I correct to assume this currently doesn't apply to my car? I'll still be keeping my eyes out for more info coming out.

By the way, you should change the graffic at the bottom of this post, that shows a 2015/2016 Hyundai Sonata, and not a 2011/2012 Sonata. It's a bit misleading since it's showing the incorrect model year. :)

According to the Hyundai press release: "Metal debris may not have been fully removed from the crankshaft area during manufacturing at Hyundai's Alabama engine plant. That can restrict oil flow to the connecting rod bearings, and since they are cooled by oil, they could fail. If that happens, the engines could stall and cause a crash."

"Stall?" That just might be a bit of an understatement.