HYUNDAI

‘Where's the Hyundai?': Car Thefts Made Easier by Design Flaw Continue in Prince George's County

Rick Logan works at an auto repair business in Capitol Heights. On Monday morning, it seemed like Hyundais were being stolen all around him.  Here's why.

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Combine a vehicle design flaw that makes a car easy to steal and social media videos showing exactly how to do it, and you get the nightmare that many Hyundai and Kia owners are dealing with in our area and beyond. 

In Prince George’s County earlier this week, the same vehicle was stolen more than once, and the problem doesn’t appear to be going away. 

Rick Logan works at an auto repair business in Capitol Heights. On Monday morning, it seemed like Hyundais were being stolen all around him. 

Staff arrived to find that a customer’s 2016 Hyundai Sonata, recovered after being stolen and brought in for ignition repair, had been stolen again, this time from the back area of the shop.

“We get here in the morning. We move cars around. We come out, everybody’s like, ‘Where’s the Hyundai?’” Logan said.

While he was on the phone dealing with the customer and police, he got a call from his mother in Hyattsville. 

Her own Hyundai Sonata was gone. 

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“My mom called me, ‘Hey, you got the car at the shop?’ I’m like, ‘No, I didn’t bring your car to the shop.’ She’s like, ‘Well, they stole it,’” Logan recalled.  

He said he was so frustrated by the theft, he posted a video to Facebook. It showed his mother’s car being stolen with captions he provided. 

“It’s like every night. They come out about this time and they check every time to see which one they could steal,” Logan said. “It took them 10 minutes to steal it. It took them nine minutes to get in, and a minute and a half to get it and they drove off."

Logan is well aware of the ignition design flaw in certain older Hyundai and Kia vehicles, and how easily they can be stolen.

Now, when he calls dealerships to get parts to repair recovered vehicles, he's often told it's going to be a long wait. 

“When I called to get the repair for that other Hyundai that they stole from here, they told me I’m number 30 on the list,” Logan said. 

Hyundai and Kia do offer retrofit kits to make vehicles harder to steal, but they cost several hundred dollars, plus labor.

Owners who have spoken to News4 said they feel the automakers should pick up that bill.

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