2011 KIA OPTIMA — Complaint #1823705
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about ENGINE AND ENGINE COOLING:ENGINE:OIL/LUBRICATION:SEALS/GASKETS filed July 6, 2022
NHTSA complaint #1823705 (ODI reference 11472518) concerns a 2011 KIA OPTIMA and was filed on July 6, 2022. The owner reports the failure occurred on July 3, 2021. The vehicle had 11,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to North Carolina based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as engine and engine cooling:engine:oil/lubrication:seals/gaskets, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same KIA OPTIMA cohort independently describe similar engine and engine cooling:engine:oil/lubrication:seals/gaskets failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2011 KIA OPTIMA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2011 Kia Optima. The contact stated while driving approximately 25 MPH, the vehicle was consuming an excessive amount of engine oil. The contact was consistently topping off the engine oil. There were no warning lights illuminated. The contact stated that there was no smoke or abnormal odor coming from the vehicle. The vehicle was diagnosed with excessive oil consumption; however, the vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 11,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1823705 |
| ODI Number | 11472518 |
| Date Filed | July 6, 2022 |
| Failure Date | July 3, 2021 |
| VIN | KNAGM4A77B5 |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.