Kia Boys TikTok Theft Wave Drives Class Action Against Hyundai and Kia—and Surge of Glass Work

Turning to late September 2022, a story that had been building for months reached a legal inflection point: a class action lawsuit filed in August 2022 in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Iowa alleged that all Kia and Hyundai models from 2011 to 2021 contained a defect—specifically, the absence of an engine immobilizer required under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 114.

The lawsuit, brought by plaintiffs Ann Brady and Leah Price, alleged that because the vehicles lacked the immobilizer's required function—preventing engine activation and forward self-mobility when the key is removed—the vehicles were worth less than their advertised market value. The "Kia Boys" TikTok challenge had made the vulnerability nationally known, teaching a technique for starting the vehicles with a USB cable that bypassed the missing immobilizer function.

Smashed windows were the primary physical entry mechanism when thieves used the technique, meaning auto glass shops in cities with high Kia and Hyundai theft concentrations were seeing a surge of smash-and-grab window repairs. In Virginia's Hampton Roads region, Kia or Hyundai vehicles accounted for 38% of reported car thefts in August, 43% in September and 69% in October.

For auto glass shops, the theft wave had an operational silver lining mixed with ethical complexity: volume was up for shops able to handle the work, but the jobs were difficult—customers were often distressed, insurance claims were complicated by fraud concerns, and replacement windows for stolen vehicles raised questions about whether replacement would simply facilitate another theft if the underlying vehicle security flaw remained unaddressed.

Hyundai and Kia subsequently rolled out software updates designed to improve theft resistance on some affected models, and some cities and police departments issued anti-theft kits including steering wheel clubs for affected owners. The class action continued to move through the courts, with plaintiffs seeking remedies that included vehicle buybacks and free security upgrades.