You are going to stay home and keep your car garaged until MAY!? Inconceivable. Get it out and drive somewhere. You'll go batty if you don't.
If you're buying used, a full research of the
VIN online would, of course, be a priority.
The first thing you look for is paint quality. Do a thorough bumper to bumper, rocker panels to sunroof, check of every edge and surface. If you don't see anything flaking off or any little pinpricks in the clear coat, then you have good paint at least: the amount of road attrition (especially, of course, in front) will vary; look for the windshield wiper scrape in the rear edge of the hood; and a forward hatch edge chip is fairly common too. The (usually driver's side) forwardmost, lower corner of the headlight assembly rubs on the paint and can cause a detectable amount of chipping there, if you're looking for it; if you can see it easily, then there is a paint quality issue with at least the front bumper cover; and you'll probably also see more than acceptable chips from road attrition in the front bumper cover.
Next up: drive and listen; you may hear a thump or even a persistent rattle/creak from the hatch; if so, this is either fixable with washers in the hatch lid stoppers, and/or one or both hatch lid pistons are loose. Any ticks, squeaks or rattles coming from the sunroof? This is a fairly common complaint on the forum; and recently some innovative, successful and simple fixes have been shared (the most recent and encouraging one was pushing up hard on either side of the headliner beside the sunroof and reseating the Velcro attachments in the roof). There are other possible noise makers in the door panels, the dash or steering column. But keep in mind that ALL extraneous noises combined do not affect anywhere near half of the vehicles. So, odds are on your side when testing a particular vehicle.
A number of vehicles exhibit pulsating brakes. The OEM pads are too soft in N. America for some drivers the way they brake. Nearly all of these are in front (vibrating steering wheel on braking). Changing out the pads after getting the rotors surfaced or replaced is the answer; aftermarket pads, not OEM. (It looks like Kia has finally started to address this by allowing different pads on at the dealers, and even paying for these beyond the 12K mile warranty cutoff. At least some on the forum have recently reported this success story.)
There are no "first year" issues with the Stinger as far as a typical problem with the model that Kia has to address. A few TSBs have been issued, mostly affecting limited run periods, and these should have been attended to before you buy yours.
