Mom buys daughter 2017 Hyundai Elantra and gets the oil changed. But 8 weeks later, the mechanic’s dipstick comes up completely dry

A mother who surprised her daughter with a car is now dealing with a big problem just weeks after buying it. Ebony Thomas bought her daughter a 2017 Hyundai Elantra in July. Before giving her daughter the keys, Thomas took the car to a mechanic for a checkup and oil change. The mechanic changed the oil and filters and said everything looked good.

But just two months later, Thomas says her daughter’s check engine light turned on. Thomas took the car back to her mechanic to see what was wrong. What he found was pretty shocking.

“My mechanic tells me what’s wrong with it. He tells me the car has no fricking oil in it,” Thomas said in a TikTok video. The mechanic showed her the dipstick, and it was completely dry. There was no oil on it at all. Thomas couldn’t understand how a car could burn through all its oil in just eight weeksn.

This isn’t the first time people have complained about this problem

Thomas says her mechanic told her that Hyundai has had problems with some of its cars burning too much oil. The 2017 Elantra seems to be one of the cars with this issue. Thomas called Hyundai customer service to get help. But she says they told her she would have to pay $200 just to check what was wrong. They also said that if the car didn’t have a warranty, she would have to pay for any fixes herself.

“If you do your research, you see this is a thing with Hyundai. Their engines burn excessive amounts of oil in these types of vehicles, and they do not want to fix the problem,” Thomas said in her video.

Thomas isn’t the only one who has run into this. An NBC station in Los Angeles talked about another family with a 2017 Hyundai. Their car had only been driven 2,000 miles when the check engine light came on. When the dad checked the oil, there wasn’t any in the car. Like a woman who was fined for pouring coffee down a drain, Thomas found herself dealing with unexpected costs she never saw coming.

Thomas was pretty upset with how Hyundai handled things. She pointed out that when she first posted a video surprising her daughter with the car, Hyundai left a comment saying “Mom of the year!” But now that she has a real problem with the car, she says they aren’t helping. 

In her new TikTok video, which more than 126,000 people have watched, Thomas told other people to be careful about buying Hyundai cars. She wants Hyundai to fix the oil problem in its vehicles. The whole thing left Thomas feeling let down by how the company treated her, similar to others who expected better from big companies.