The first year, and the cleanest oil-consumption file in the catalogue — the engine goes quiet, then it goes.

Report the oil loss and the dealer starts a consumption test: bring the car back every 1,000 miles, four times, and the level is checked and recorded each visit. A Palisade owner filmed his way through it. First visit: "we were told by the dealership to drive it for A Thousand Miles bring it back in and they would check the oil consumption. Well, we did that this morning and it's down about a half a quart, and a thousand miles for a vehicle with 50,000 miles is really not acceptable." By the third check he is at 57,244 miles, being told the test is a waste of his time, and he does the arithmetic out loud with the service advisor: "what's the service interval for Hyundai Palisade — 6,000 miles. How much oil does a Hyundai Palisade have — around six quarts. Okay, so if I go by the interval I'm going to be bringing you a car that's almost bone dry." That is the whole problem in one exchange. If a quart per 1,000 miles is treated as acceptable, and the sump holds about six quarts, and the service interval is 6,000 miles, then a car sitting exactly at the acceptable line arrives at its next oil change empty. He also asked for the threshold in writing and could not get it: "can you provide some sort of documentation that says that Hyundai allows this 1,000 mile quart of oil level? No, I've only heard it on the phone." One federal filer asserts that Hyundai's own bulletin sets the same threshold — that is the owner's characterisation, and no such document appears in this session's sources. Run the test for the paper trail. Do not read a pass as a clean bill of health.

There is exactly one piece of free engine coverage on this car and its edges are the whole game. Hyundai extended the warranty on the oil filter housing seal, in its own words, because Palisades "may exhibit engine oil leakage at the engine oil filter housing assembly due to deterioration of the housing seal", taking coverage to "15 years / 180,000 miles from the date of original retail delivery or date of first use (whichever occurs first)" and stating it is "valid for original and subsequent owners". The repair procedure is Hyundai's Technical Service Bulletin 26-EM-012H — a TSB is the fix instructions a manufacturer sends its dealers. Hyundai spells out what it overrides, and this is the sentence used-car buyers need: the extension applies "even if the vehicle is still within the New Vehicle Limited Warranty (NVLW) of 5 years / 60,000 miles or Powertrain Warranty of 10 years / 100,000 miles (for the original owner)". Read that parenthesis carefully. The famous ten-year powertrain warranty belongs to the first owner. The oil-filter-housing extension does not — it follows the car. The housing is the plastic assembly the oil filter screws into, and when the seal goes, oil leaves onto the road rather than through the exhaust: "plastic piece to oil housing assembly cracked and had 9 other palisades in for same exact issue. No warning lamps. Cost $519 to replace part." The line to hold: this covers the leak. It does not cover consumption, and it does not cover an engine that has already seized.

Recall 22V633, Hyundai's number 235, covers 2020 to 2022 Palisades "potentially equipped with a tow hitch harness installed as original equipment, or purchased as an accessory through a Hyundai dealership". NHTSA's wording is direct: "Debris and moisture accumulation on the tow hitch harness module printed circuit board (PCB) may cause an electrical short, which can result in a fire." A printed circuit board is the green board inside the module that the trailer wiring plugs into. NHTSA carries a park-outside flag on this campaign, and the remedy text repeats it: "Owners are advised to park outside and away from structures until the recall repair is complete." Dealers install a new fuse and wire extension kit free of charge, and owner letters were mailed 18 May 2023. The trap is the phrase "or purchased as an accessory" — a hitch added at a dealer years after the car was sold is inside this recall, and an owner who never thought of the car as a tow vehicle may never have connected the letter to their own car.

These two campaigns cover every Palisade from 2020 to 2025 and, on the most recent federal filings, neither has a final fix. Recall 25V607, Hyundai's number 283, is blunt: "The seat belt buckles in the driver, passenger, and second-row window seats may fail to latch." Hyundai's interim instruction is to "insert the belt firmly into the buckle with a quick and direct motion, pulling on the belt to confirm the seat belt is fully secured, until the recall remedy is performed". Interim letters went out from 23 October 2025; the final remedy was "anticipated June 2026". Recall 26V034, Hyundai's number 292, covers the third row: "The side curtain air bags for third-row occupants may deploy improperly in a crash", which makes these vehicles non-compliant with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 226, "Ejection Mitigation" — the rule that stops occupants being thrown out of a side window in a rollover. Interim letters from 13 March 2026, final remedy "anticipated May 2026". Owners across every year of this car are filing about the same wall: "the parts for the repairs were not available". There is one genuine consolation on the belts, and it is separate from the recall: Hyundai also extended the seat belt buckle warranty to 15 years and 150,000 miles for original and subsequent owners, under bulletin 25-BE-010H, for buckles showing abnormal "insertion, ejection feeling, sound, or potential debris that influences operation". That entitlement survives the recall backlog.

Recall 22V627, Hyundai's number 233, covers 2020 and 2021 Palisades: "The windshield wiper motor may become inoperative, causing the wipers to fail." Dealers replace the driver-side windshield wiper arm free of charge, and letters were mailed 13 December 2022. This is worth flagging for two reasons. First, it was expanded a few months later into recall 23V180, which covers 2021 to 2023 cars and was opened out of a federal Recall Query, NHTSA action RQ22005 — so a 2020 car sits inside the original campaign only. Second, this is a defect the platform twin simply does not have; there is no wiper-motor recall on any Kia Telluride year. If you are cross-shopping the pair, this one is a genuine point of difference rather than a shared inheritance. One owner shows the cost of missing the window: told there was no recall on his car, he paid "$1,126.30" for a harness replacement because the car had 113,000 miles.

This is the Palisade's own story and it has no counterpart on the Telluride. From launch, owners of light-interior Nappa leather cars reported a smell described, with unnerving consistency, as garlic. Reporting at the time: "the odor was expressed as the smell of garlic or rotten product, and the higher the outside temperature it was more severe"; "some vehicles have serious odors when parked in the sun for a long time or when the vehicle has not been used for several days"; "replacing the headrest and floor mat did not solve the problem, and it is known that the odor comes up from the hole where the headrest is mounted on the seat. The other upholstery options are not having this problem." A second outlet quoted a Hyundai spokesperson: "We are aware of the concern and are currently in the midst of the investigation which includes identifying and validating a fix. Once a repair method is confirmed effective, a technical service bulletin will be released to provide directions to our dealer body on how to resolve the concern." That bulletin exists. Hyundai's federal communications file contains three revisions of a service bulletin for the 2020 and 2021 Palisade, described as "the procedure to service certain Palisade (LX2) vehicles that may have odor emitting from the headrest(s)". The summary does not state what the procedure is, so do not accept a description of the fix from anyone who has not read the bulletin itself — but a dealer telling you this is normal off-gassing that will fade is contradicted by Hyundai's own paperwork. Check it on a hot day, with the car closed, before you buy.

The first-year-only campaign, and the first recall this nameplate ever had. Recall 19V802, Hyundai's number 186, covers 2020 Palisades: "The mounting bolts used to secure the side curtain air bags may damage the side curtain air bags during deployment." The consequence NHTSA states is that damaged curtain airbags "may not inflate properly in the event of a crash". Dealers install a protective cover over the mounting bolts free of charge, and the recall began 20 December 2019. It is old, the remedy is simple, and it should read complete on any car that has seen a dealer — which is exactly why a car where it does not read complete is telling you something about how it has been maintained.

Hyundai extended the paint warranty on white 2020 to 2023 Palisades, and the terms are unusually generous. The bulletin says these cars "may exhibit peeling or bubbling on metal body panels: hood, fender(s), roof, door(s), quarter panel(s), and tailgate/trunk", and that coverage moves "from 3 years and 36,000 miles, to 10 years and unlimited miles from the date of original retail delivery or date of first use", valid "for original and subsequent owners". Unlimited miles, transferable, ten years. Two exclusions matter: it applies only to "factory-applied paint" and "does not cover collision-related paint repairs", and it is void on any car "declared a total loss or sold for salvage" or carrying a branded title. This is one of the places the Palisade beats its platform twin outright — Kia ran no paint campaign for the Telluride at all, despite a white-paint delamination cluster in the Telluride's own federal file. If you are looking at a white Palisade with bubbling above the windscreen or along a door edge, that is a claim, not a negotiation.

Palisades fitted with self-levelling rear shocks develop "a clunking or thumping noise from the rear of the vehicle while driving over rough roads", in Hyundai's words, "caused by worn self-leveling rear shock absorbers". Hyundai extended coverage on them to "10 years/120,000 miles from the date of original retail delivery or date of first use", valid for original and subsequent owners, under bulletin 26-SS-001H, and adds a detail worth quoting at the counter: "for the first repair, replacement of both rear shock absorbers will be covered by this warranty extension." Both, not one. A separate diagnostic bulletin identifies which cars have them: 2020 and 2021 Palisades "equipped with rear self-leveling shocks (vehicles with factory-equipped 20[-inch] wheels: SEL trim with convenience/premium package; all Limited trim)". So this is a trim-and-wheel question you can answer in the car park before it becomes a repair question. The honest comparison: Kia covers the identical failure on the Telluride for 15 years and 180,000 miles. Hyundai covers it for 10 and 120,000. On a part that Palisade owners in later model years report replacing two, three and four times, that gap is real money.

The 2020 and 2021 Palisade appear in Hyundai's anti-theft programmes and in the immobilizer class settlement, and the eligibility test is mechanical rather than editorial. Hyundai launched "an anti-theft software upgrade and window decal campaign (Campaign 993), combined with an anti-theft steering wheel lock campaign (Campaign P32), and anti-theft ignition cylinder protector campaign (Campaign 9A5) in response to an increase in thefts of certain 2011-2022MY Hyundai vehicles not equipped with engine immobilizers targeted through social media", noting that "in November 2021, engine immobilizers became standard on all Hyundai vehicles produced". An engine immobilizer is the chip in the key that stops a car being hot-wired. The settlement paperwork narrows it further: "Class Vehicles manufactured without an engine immobilizer have traditional turn-key-to-start ignition systems." So a push-button Palisade is almost certainly outside all of this, and a turn-key one may be inside it. The hardware is also opt-in — Hyundai's bulletin says the zinc-reinforced ignition cylinder protector "shall be performed and claimed upon customer request only", and "vehicles not equipped with an immobilizer during production at the factory are eligible". Check the VIN rather than assuming either way. Worth knowing: the Kia Telluride has no anti-theft campaign of any kind, so this exposure is Palisade-specific among the twins.

The 2020 has the usual crop of launch-year bulletins, and they are all cheap or free, which is the point of listing them. Six separate documents cover one fault: Palisades "may intermittently experience the BCW Malfunction Indicator Light ON with a message Check Blind-Spot Collision Warning System displayed on the instrument cluster. When the BCW Malfunction Indicator Light is ON, the BCW function becomes inoperative." BCW is Blind-Spot Collision Warning, the system that lights the door mirror when something is alongside you; the fix is a software update. A separate service campaign covers the power tailgate on 2020 Palisades that "may experience a nonoperational condition", remedied by a "power tailgate spindle wire harness revision". A third covers an "AVN software update to a Palisade exhibiting the following condition: Unresponsive radio after multiple uses of voice recognition to perform navigational searches" — AVN is the Audio/Video/Navigation head unit. And a 2020-only service campaign replaced "the rear sunroof glass on certain 2020MY Palisade equipped with the rear sunroof". None of these is a safety recall, so none will show on a standard VIN recall lookup. Ask a dealer to run service-campaign history separately.

The gearbox behind this V6 is an eight-speed automatic, designated A8LF1 and also known as the A8A36, rated to 266 pound-feet of torque. It is not a significant part of the 2020 federal file, and an independent review of the powertrain is willing to defend it: "this 3.8 L V6 with the 8-speed has proven to be pretty darn reliable. People just don't really have issues with the engine for the most part." What it does have is a documented sensitivity. The same review notes the A8L family is "highly sensitive to even minor overheating" and drops into limp mode quickly under wheelspin or heavy off-road load, which it frames as protection the older six-speed lacked; its most common failure is in the low-reverse brake clutches. The practical instruction is an interval: the owner's manual asks for fluid every 56,000 miles, the review recommends 40,000. There is one diagnostic note worth carrying — the same source warns that shudder or chatter when turning at walking pace is routinely misread as a gearbox fault when it is actually the all-wheel-drive coupler. Get the diagnosis before the quote.