Well, let me start with an incident that opened up this can of worms. As some of you may have read in my 'lifelog' thread linked below, I met with an accident on the day the car was supposed to be transported to the warehouse before being loaded to a container and exported to Finland.
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/trave...ml#post4842321 (Times of Finland : How I got Finnish'd) <Shameless lug to my own thread.
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In short, owing to all the work the preceding nights in packing for the removal of goods, I hadn't slept well and I had to drive an hour away for an errand. What had never happened before in my life, happened. I slept on the wheel driving at 65 MPH/105 KPH. and veered into a small valley which was the road divider. Most of you familiar with US roads can relate to this type of super wide dividers.
I was so asleep that even the rumble strips I drove could not wake me up.
When I eventually woke up and stopped and assessed the damage, I was much relieved that the airbag didn't pop. A whole bunch of underbody components were strewn in the wake of my unplanned off-road venture. Car was drivable and I drove back to finish the errand and transported the car as planned.
In my mind, I truly believed that these components could be sourced in Finland too and fixed back to original easily.
However, reality was far from that.
Details after a quick detour but still on the same topic - as soon as the car landed in Finland, I had to get it registered. I had all the customs paper work handy but then, there was one small issue. There was no documented measurement of Co2 emissions of a Sorento 2.4 GDI. This meant a regular Inspection center, which typically can issue me a registration, could not do it. They had to look up reference documents across Europe before giving up and taking measurement anew. This is another way I knew I had a version of the car that was one of it's kind in Europe.
Drove around with a temporary number till they figured this out. Did drive it on US plates for a few days and got many curious looks till it got Baptized in Finland.
Now, back to the accident repair. The local KIA dealer, per protocol, reached out to KIA's part supplier with the required BOM. All I needed were basic parts such as wheel inner housing, fender liner, Skip plate panels, brackets and related items. How hard could it be?
Boy was I wrong. My requirement went into a major red-tape jumping from one table to another including KIA brand manager in Finland. Absolutely nobody from the official channels could source these parts for me after nearly 1 year of jumping tables. Reason- this is an American model and hence has different parts.
I eventually learnt that the parts are designed slightly different for the American and the European models. What a revelation. The plastic parts in the American models are certainly cheaper and lower quality compared to the European model.
Loaded a long IKEA package once and the plastic panel in the boot cracked.
Tied my Dog to one of the load hooks inside the boot which easily broke and tore up the plastic around it when he tried to jump out of the car.
Oh the Misery !
There was no issue running the car though and life went on without issues even when I was chasing KIA Motors (KMC) down to have them import the parts.
Eventually I had to locate a KIA dealer in the neighborhood of a buddy of mine in New Jersey, USA who offered to buy it on my behalf and go to FedEx and ship it out to me. Eventually for reasons I can't recollect, FedEx wasn't going to ship it out either. I had to then take the traditional route of a shipping company who does removal of goods to go to this place pick up the parts, pack them up properly for a long ride on the sea. After a long voyage, it then reached me after getting customs clearance from a company I had to engage just for this.
Phew. What an ordeal.
This was a shocking blow to the assumptions made before shipping the car out of US. Was this going to be the beginning of all problems?
Perhaps it was. While the required parts were enroute to Finland, the car threw up Check Engine light. Upon thorough inspection, the issue was isolated to an evaporator issue in the fuel tank and needed a new spare part to fix and eliminate check Engine light. I could not imagine going through it all over again. Got the error wiped and moved on.
The light came on several times thereafter and I just chose to live with it.
Got the body parts installed, fixed some other minor niggles, did some body work to remove some scratches and generally gave the car a refresh. Luckily, there weren't anymore problems but the big one had scarred me for good.
After the mandatory ownership period of 2 yrs were done, I went over to a few dealerships to trade-in or sell the Sorento. I got ridiculously low offers just because this was an unknown car in Europe. So much for a 1 of 1 car eh. 1 of 1 Cadillac, sure. There are takers. 1 of 1 Kia Sorento from the US? Nobody. Turns out, using mathematics for making these kind of decisions is not such a great idea.
Decided to keep the Sorento till it chose to drive itself to it's grave. We anyway had much reduced driving distances than before.
And that's the
Story of my 1 of 1 KIA Sorento and how it chose me.