Poor Steering Feel and I Don't Mind - 2011 Hyundai Sonata Long-Term Road Test

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Poor Steering Feel and I Don't Mind - 2011 Hyundai Sonata Long-Term Road Test

We lived with the 2011 Hyundai Sonata GLS for a year. Read all about our daily driving experiences in our long-term road test.

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the_k_man

I nearly returned my 2013 Sonata Ltd I bought through Enterprise Rental sales because of that mushy steering! I did have to micro correct all of the time, and had to really concentrate to stay in my highway lane. Plus, I was going 5-10mph under the speed limit in it.


That was until I did some research and found out I was just one of thousands of customers with this same steering issue in 2011-2014 Sonatas. I found out about a Technical Service Bulletin: TSB-14-ST-001, aiding service depts how to set steering in response to customer requests.

So I showed it to my local dealership counter person, and he had
a tech look at it within half an hour. He hooked up his computer to
my dash, navigated to the sub menus concerning steering, and
asked which mode I preferred: "GLS" "SE" or "Sport". I requested sport, and when on the highway 15 minutes later, it was as if I had been blind folded and sat in a BMW 5-series! Gone were the twitchiness and wandering at speeds over 30mph. I could drive confidently up to 80 mph in this Sonata, and have made it a keeper!

For those who prefer power steering you could blow on the
steering wheel to turn it: More power to ya! I want a car
that I can drive, not park easily. And there is nothing "relaxing"
about finding yourself drifting into a lane(or shoulder!) you had no
intention of being in. And it's not an alignment issue.