2016 Hyundai SONATA

If you want an affordable used car, the safest choices aren't necessarily out of the question.

To combat a wave of vehicle theft, Hyundai and Kia have developed a software fix and will even be sponsoring mobile clinics to install the software in five U.S. cities.

The software upgrade attempts to make older Hyundai vehicles more resilient to theft by modifying their vehicle control modules to not only activate the factory alarm when locking the doors, but also a special “ignition kill” feature that prevents thieves from starting the vehicle.

Hyundai is recalling more than 466,000 variants of its Sonata sedan for a software malfunction for the turn signals.

Hyundai says it plans a free retrofit of CarPlay into certain 2015 Sonatas, 
 as well as into early 2016 Sonatas that missed it, though it still may be 
 months away, according to a spokesman.

Between that last-hurrah cookout and a slate of good college-football 
 matchups, you may want to add car shopping to your Labor Day 
 weekend.