Remember the Kia Boyz? Remember that weird moment, late in the pandemic, when Kias and Hyundais were being stolen at a huge clip with USB cables? A strange combination of factors, many related to COVID-19, led to a historic increase in car thefts. What goes up must come down, and 2024 saw a massive drop in stolen cars.
The Morning Dump today is all about reaping and sowing. Just as Hyundai and Kia had to spend huge amounts of money to make up for the tiny amount they saved by not putting immobilizers in cars, so must Toyota pay $1.6 billion to the United States for importing cheater diesels via its Hino subsidiary to try to save itself some time and money.
Tesla made a totally wild-looking pickup truck in order to differentiate itself from what’s out there, but to achieve that aesthetic it had to glue steel trim to the exterior of the vehicle. That glue is now failing on some vehicles and the company will recall nearly every Cybertruck made.
Japan’s government, reportedly fearing a Foxconn takeover of Nissan, pushed the company into an arranged marriage with Honda. It didn’t take, and now Foxconn may be getting what it wants from Nissan in a more roundabout way.
Kia-Hyundai Help Solve A Problem That Kia-Hyundai Created
I do think the pandemic broke our collective minds in ways we’ll only be able to grasp looking back on this period in history from way in the future. Exhibit Z, for the last letter in KiaBoyz, is that time in 2022 when teens on TikTok showed the world how to use a USB thumb drive and a flathead screwdriver to steal an entire car.
For reasons of thrift, Kia and Hyundai decided to sell versions of its lower-trim cars without an immobilizer (basically, a device that can sense when a legit key fob is in the car). The brands did this for years, and it wasn’t a big deal until somehow this information got to rowdy, thieving teens.
Someone realized that you could remove the trim around the steering wheel, pop off the part of the ignition cylinder that interfaces with a physical key, and twist the ignition into the “on” position using a USB cord. The information spread virally on TikTok and thieves around the country started looking for Kias/Hyundais. Specifically, they were looking for cars without push-button ignitions.
While some teens were doing this for the lulz, many were doing it to harvest parts. Older economy cars are exactly the kind owned by budget-conscious individuals who might not be looking to buy new, genuine parts. The pandemic also led to global shortages of just about everything, meaning that the value of those stolen parts was even higher.
It was a perfect storm, leading to a massive increase in stolen cars in 2022 and 2023. So many cars were stolen that insurers started to drop Kia and Hyundai owners. The automakers attempted to offer fixes, including sending stickers to people letting them know the cars are now not as easy to steal.
The good news, unless you’re an Accutane-raging miscreant teen, is that the fixes seem to be helping. According to statistics from the National Insurance Crime Bureau, car thefts dropped by 17% from 2023 to 2024. This is back to pre-pandemic levels and the biggest decrease in 40 years. From NICB:
“The overall decrease in stolen vehicles nationwide is a testament to the hard work and collaboration between law enforcement, multi-jurisdictional auto theft task forces, governing bodies, vehicle manufacturers, and NICB,” said David J. Glawe, President and CEO of NICB. “Collectively, these groups used data and intelligence to develop actionable strategies to help local authorities investigate and prosecute offenders and to prevent vehicle theft from occurring in the first place.”
NICB assisted thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies in 2024 on theft investigations, aiding in the identification of complex vehicle theft rings and the recovery of hundreds of thousands of stolen vehicles across the United States.
Last year, 850,708 vehicles were stolen nationwide, marking a significant decline from the recent historic peak of 1,020,729 thefts in 2023.
While all of the above is likely true, there are two unmentioned factors worth considering:
- Parts are now cheaper as supply chains have improved. This may be bad for companies like ZF, but it makes stolen parts less valuable. Even before the KiaBoyz went viral, thefts went up.
- Hyundai-Kia vehicles may still be popular targets, but all the efforts made by the company seem to be helping. Overall, Hyundai and Kia vehicles saw a whopping 37.5% year-over-year decrease in sales.
Of course, Hyundai and Kia vehicles are still targets. A friend of mine bought a used Kia Optima last year (she didn’t ask me first) and it was stolen within the first two days of ownership. Of the top five most stolen vehicles, Hyundai and Kia still make up three of the spots:
- Hyundai Elantra (31,712 cars stolen in 2024)
- Hyundai Sonata (26,720)
- Chevrolet Silverado (21,666)
- Honda Accord (18,529)
- Kia Optima (17,493)
Hyundai is lucky that HyundaiBoyz never caught on.
Toyota-Hino Agrees To Pay $1.6 Billion For Diesel Cheating
Volkswagen may be the automaker most associated with Dieselgate, but it’s far from the only automaker that was trying to squeeze more power and mileage out of oil burners through various cheats.
Hino, the Toyota subsidiary that makes the company’s diesel engines, admitted it used “illicit short-cuts” and falsified emissions test data in a guilty plea this week. This is connected to the larger Daihatsu Charade wherein various arms of Toyota tried to rush products to market to meet increasingly strict deadlines.
The penalties, according to Reuters, are quite severe:
U.S. District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith in Detroit accepted the Japanese truck and engine manufacturer’s guilty plea and sentenced the company to pay a fine of $521.76 million and serve five years of probation during which it will be prohibited from importing diesel engines it manufactured into the United States.
The court also entered a $1.087 billion forfeiture money judgment against the company.
“Companies who intentionally evade our nation’s environmental laws, including by fabricating data to feign compliance with those laws, deserve punishment and will be held criminally accountable,” said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s acting enforcement chief Jeffrey Hall.
A ban on the importation of diesel engines seems worse than the actual monetary judgment.
Tesla Recalling Basically All Cybertrucks For Steel Trim Failure
We’ve now hit the magic 8th recall for the Tesla Cybertruck. There was the weird pedal issue, the defective inverters, and the tire-chewing wheel covers. This sometimes happens with new vehicles, although a curious number of them appear to be related to trying to make the truck look cool.
This latest involves a steel trim piece glued to the car. Here’s how NHTSA describes it:
The Cybertruck is equipped with a cosmetic applique along the exterior of the vehicle, known as the cant rail, which is an assembly comprised of an electrocoated steel stamping joined to a stainless steel panel with structural adhesive. The cant rail assembly is affixed to the vehicle with fasteners. On affected vehicles, the cant rail stainless steel panel may delaminate at the
adhesive joint, which may cause the panel to separate from the vehicle.
Tesla will fix this problem by using a different structural adhesive that’s “not prone to environmental embrittlement” and, additionally, by adding a stud welded to the panel and then affixed with a nut.
How is this impacting the company? The stock is mostly flat so far today after the Secretary of the Treasury told people to go out and buy Tesla stock, which feels like a weird thing for the Treasury Secretary to do.
Foxconn Might Close The Deal With Mitsubishi
There was a time not that long ago when Honda and Nissan were planning to merge, thus bringing Mitsubishi with them to create one big supercompany. The world discovered, quite quickly, that this was likely due to Taiwanese phone maker Foxconn sniffing around Nissan.
Just as quickly the whole deal fell apart, and the world learned that maybe Honda was more interested in Mitsubishi all along. Mitsubishi, being the belle of the ball, seems to have attracted a lot of dance partners lately.
Foxconn, stymied from grabbing Nissan outright, may just skip ahead and make a deal with Mitsubishi according to this report from Nikkei Asia:
Foxconn is finalizing a deal to collaborate with Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors on electric vehicles, sources briefed on the matter told Nikkei Asia.
If completed, the arrangement would be a major breakthrough for the Taiwan-based iPhone assembler’s yearslong ambition to expand its presence in the EV industry, giving it an established automaker as a key client.
Discussions on the EV project have been going on for more than six months, according to multiple sources. Foxconn Chairman Young Liu values the potential collaboration with the Japanese player as a way to prove the contract electronics manufacturer’s EV capabilities and open doors to work with other carmakers, the people said.
This makes sense to me, although it remains complicated. The largest shareholder of Nissan at the moment is Renault, and the largest shareholder of Mitsubishi Motors is Nissan.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
It’s grey and foggy outside and that, to me, feels like Beach House, so please enjoy the hyper-mellow “Space Song.”
The Big Question
Have you ever had a car stolen? What happened? Did you get it back?
Someone tried to steal my dead car once. I was in my 20s and had a Toyota Tercel that mostly ran on sheer will and luck. It crapped out for the umpteenth time one morning as I attempted to go to work. Would not start or even turn over.
My dad took pity and sold me his old Ford Ranger on a payment plan, as he recently bought himself a new F250.
So, I was driving the Ranger and planning to fix the Tercel up enough to get it running and sell it cheap. In the meantime I parked it in my apartment’s “Overflow Lot”, where you had to park extra vehicles, trailers, boats, etc. The complex was on a hill, and the overflow lot was down below and mostly out of view of the complex. I coasted it down the hill from the upper lot to the lower one and parked it.
About a week later on a Saturday, I went down to the lot and pulled the battery out, thinking it may just need a charge, and/or the alternator was going out. Took it up to my apartment, set it on my deck with a borrowed charger to charge up over night.
Sunday morning, I go down to the lot with the battery freshly charged. I found that someone had tossed a rather large chunk of concreate through my passenger side window, as it was still sitting in the seat with glass bits everywhere. The cover on the steering column was torn off, and there were scrapes and scratches all over my ignition switch. The glovebox was open, so they went through the car realizing that stealing it was a bust, but apparently they didn’t want my amazing $50 aftermarket Radio Shack tape deck, as it was still there. I think they might have got about $1 in change out the ashtray and a few of my cassettes.
I could only shake my head in amazement.
I’ve shared this anecdote here before, but my dad’s beloved 1985 Monte Carlo SS was stolen out of his driveway around 1990 and was never recovered. Eventually the insurance company replaced it with a “like” 1986 SS, but it was just not the same, and he ended up selling that one a couple of years later.
I’ve been pretty confident the joyless ride trend would eventually end. Oh well, back to bath salts for the kids…
“Have you ever had a car stolen? What happened? Did you get it back?”
Yes. My beloved pickemup truck got taken from my own driveway. Dipshit here (that’s me, to be clear. I am the dipshit) left a spare key in the ashtray, AND then left the fuggin’ doors unlocked. Imagine my surprise when one morning a local police officer was at my front door asking, “Why is your truck idling in the alley behind Mahoney’s bar?”
I didn’t believe him. I walked past him down my front stairs to see for myself. I don’t remember much of the next few minutes, but at one point he called into the radio mic on his shoulder, “Nah, it’s not him. He’s dumbfounded.”
Best they could figure based on some other things that happened in the neighborhood, a kid was tossing unlocked cars looking for change. The kid instead found my space key (again, because I am a dumbass), and decided to take my truck for a joyride. Fortunately the kid only made it a few blocks. The alley behind Mahoney’s bar is a dead end. They smacked into the wall, causing a bit of paint damage, but that’s all. They then abandoned the truck with it still running, and kicked one of the taillights out just to be a dick.
This is how I learned my truck can idle all night, and only use a quarter tank of gas.
I definitely got off lucky. I no longer keep a spare key in the truck, and I’ve gotten much better about locking the doors.
I’m not sure I understand the difference between Kias without immobilizers and like, the majority of cars before the 2000s without immobilizers. Is it something about the lock cylinder you can pop a usb cable into to start it that does it? So is the issue really lack of immobilizer or poor ignition cylinder design?
Like I’ve had plenty of cars without immobilizers, actually the majority of them, which is great for getting replacement keys made cheap, even got a glow in the dark blank for my Neon and went down to the hardware store to get it cut to match, and I never had any of them stolen, and I’ve lived/worked in some sketchy neighborhoods, lock my doors but that’s not much of a deterrent if someone’s really anxious to steal.
“tik tok” plus this weird culture of kids realizing and want to do crimes knowing not much will be done to them. It probably helps that Hyundai and Kias are all over and the shape on the ignition switch. Quite a few cities have issues with teenage car jackers. It seems like they used to steal mainly classic cars and trucks back then. These kids just steal to steal and joy ride and maybe get $200 from someone selling parts online or using it for other crimes.
About 12 years ago, my now-husband had a 240SX he got as a graduation gift. We lived in a fairly nice neighborhood in Denver, but it was still street parked. Somebody tried to steal it twice in one week, first breaking off a skeleton key in the door then a few days after breaking it off in the ignition. After two back to back locksmith repair bills and two postcards from Denver Police stating they were ignoring my reports, it magically turned into a less theft prone BMW.
I forgot about that era of Denver car thefts. I knew several people with 90s and early 2000s Japanese two doors that were broken into and unsuccessfully stolen multiple times. Sometimes they would smash the window to get in other times mess up the door lock. The Denver police as always were incredibly useless.
Tbh, I haven’t called the police on anything since. What’s the point if at best you get a postcard and at worst you get a bullet?
Yeah I had a cat stolen outside a target the police were there arresting shoplifter I went over there and told them. He thought it was a animal and was confused then said report online literally nothing. It had just happened and I told them they had to still be around doing it. Less then week later someone’s car got stollen from the same area and they went after the kid that did it and shot them.
Definitely a Beach House day around here too. Someone described them as the band that just keeps remaking “Eyes Without a Face” but hey, it’s a good song.
My old Hardbody got stolen twice, that era of Nissan had janky lock cylinders you could turn with a screwdriver. Reported it stolen both times, but folks like their kickbacks so they usually don’t check if a car’s been reported stolen before having it towed. I had to bail it out of impound once, but the other time someone stole the wheels, which made it enough hassle to tow that they contacted me first.
Glad Matt got to use the 3 Amigos graphic again!
I don’t think it’s a standard imo with key chip. It’s seems to be linked to unlocking with the key fob. I guess it will keep the lowest common denominator out.
I don’t understand how they let the CT go on that long they had been happening the whole time it was obvious temp and humidity played a roll and that they needed some kind of mechanical fastener. The irony is there are fields of these things sitting there with the same issue. Having someone manually fix all those panels isn’t going to be cheap. And stainless steel welding isn’t the easiest thing ever granted easier then aluminum. I wonder what the cost break over point to automate the process and for people that have issues other then just the panels just to give them an new one.
Sometime in the early 00’s, my group of friends “stole” an acquaintances car… and delivered it to his house.
There was a kid in our HS that left his car unlocked with the keys in the ignition every day. When one of my friends learned about this, he told him he should lock his car. The guy refused saying “nobody is ever going to do anything to my car.” So, my friend planned out a way to teach him a lesson.
One day, two of my friends left school quickly- running outside immediately to this guys unlocked car with the key in the ingition. One friend drove the “stolen” car and the other drove his own car to the kids house and parked the “stolen” car in the kids garage. Left the key in the ignition and everything. Then they drove home.
The kid who left his keys in the car panicked, called everyone (including my friends, who denied knowing anything) and cried a lot. Someone gave him a ride home and just before he was going to call the Police to report a stolen vehicle, he found his car in his garage. He never left his keys in the car again.
I’ve thankfully never had a car stolen. My anecdotal (and kinda goth) reasoning behind how that came to be is on-brand for products of the ‘90s such as myself and my cars: I stayed empty and weird.
For years the parking lot behind my workplace was a hotbed of auto break-ins and theft. Each of my coworkers’ rides – from flashy numbers like a brand-new (at the time) Celica to an old wreck of a Tempo – got burgled and/or stolen.
Yet all that time, my manual Saab 9000 hatch without so much as a mint tin in sight remained unmolested. Sometimes you want to be unwanted.
My Mazda B2200 pickup was stolen in the 1990s, and we suspect used to steal other parts/cars. It was recovered and the damage wasn’t too bad: driver’s side window that had been smashed, and easily repairable steering column/wiring damage. So, inconvenient and not fun but bearable.
The one that scalded me was the genius who decided he simply had to slice the top of my Mustang convertible to get in when it was always left unlocked with no valuables inside for just that reason. I’m generally a pretty mild-mannered guy whose initial reaction if I caught someone rooting around in the car would be to simply chase them off, but if I had seen them cutting the top of my unlocked convertible I think I would have been the one in prison for permanently maiming the perp.
I like how Tesla managed to spin “huge, five-foot long body panel comes loose at highway speeds” into “trim can come off”
The piece of stainless that forms the side of the A-Pillar and roof is what they’re talking about. It’s the length of both the windshield and roof.
It’s big enough that Jason Voorhees could probably lop some horny teens’ heads off with it and it would be a great laugh, if not for
:::gestures weakly at everything:::
You know….
That Three Amigos graphic is top shelf. Well done!
The number of vehicles stolen in the US of 850k-1m is crazy, given somewhere around 110m households in the country, that is almost 1% of households having a vehicle stolen every year. Just nuts.
This is actually pretty low, in the larger historical arc, at least in the US. The vehice theft rated declined by …almost 80% between 1990 and 2020 according to a bunch of paywalled sources. This one at least gives a summary:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41284-024-00452-2
Sold my ‘94 Accord in 2014 and a few months later Googled the license plate. The only hit was a tweet from a high school student asking anyone who’d seen her stolen Accord to let her know. I felt sorry for the victim and for the car, which had been great and didn’t deserve that fate.
Back in college, a friend with an old Cressida had a lock cylinder problem. I tore down the column, pulled the switch and fortunately was able to pop the steering wheel lock so he could start it with a screwdriver. Did the same on an old Dodge Monaco years later. Doing it neatly (and reversibly) takes time.
Chipped keys should be a no brainer in this age.
I took accutane as a teenager. Was I meant to be raging? Dang.
Guess the cant rail became a couldn’t rail