general problems of the 2003 Kia Motor Optima

While driving on the roadway, I was almost to a four way intersection, as I was going to get into the left turn lane, I turned the steering wheel slightly to the left as the steering wheel turned but the car almost did little adjusting to turn into the left turn lane. As this occurred you could here a noise underneath the vehicle . As I wasn't sure exactly what had happened, I attempted to limp the vehicle down the road to a friend's. As I did the steering got worse and as I could nearly stear the vehicle something was in the road which because of the steering I couldn't avoid it as it was late at night and raining and I ran over something that gave me a flat on the passenger side front tire . I got to my friends drive a few feet away and almost didn't get it pulled in because of the steering. As I took a look at my car, I noticed that two bolts on the driver side on the rack and pinion were almost about to fall out, two ball joints were bent and one nut was completely missing from the lower ball joint, as well as the sway bar was out of place and if I would have been driving down the highway, I do belive I would have wrecked.

After 60,000 miles, while driving or with the engine running, the engine light came on and stayed on. This has been repaired three times by replacing a main fuse. Each time it has been repaired, the problem has reoccurred. In connection with this problem, the door will lock after the driver exits the car. Sometimes, the keys have been locked in the car.

2003 kia Optima with 70,000 miles just burst into flames and burned totally up while driving down the road. Fire started somewhere in engine compartment per the fire department. Vehicle was running fine prior to incident. Very dangerous situation for passengers and surrounding property.

It was raining hard in our area( 1 inches in 1 our). I live 3 miles in on a county dirt road and it was muddy with standing water. When all the water and mud was splasted in the engine compartment the was idleing rough. This is the (2) second time this happened. The first time was about 2 months ago in April when we had same type of weather. Took the car to my dealer service dept and was told they could not find nothing wrong and that I had water in my gas. I put atleast two bottles of dry gas in tank. Car ran fine until the eveing of 6/14/03 when again we had alot of rain and the same 3 mile wet, muddy, standing water dirt road.

While driving 55 mph on the highway, consumer lost control of vehicle and hit the guard rail. The driver was injured and transported by ambulance to the hospital. Injuries unknown at this time. A police report was taken and the vehicle was towed to the dealer for analysis. Mechanic detected both frontal upper ball joints cracked.