The Kia Boyz Saga: How a TikTok Trend Humbled an Automotive Juggernaut
It shows what happens when weird social media and car culture collide in all the wrong ways.
The story of the Kia Boyz (sic), the online attention-seekers turned accidental whistleblowers against a global automotive conglomerate, reveals one of the shiniest truths of the information age: it’s very hard to keep a secret. Especially when what you’re attempting to hide happens to feed into a viral trend that clocks millions of views for those eager to exploit it for online clout.
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The Internet doesn’t care whether you’re an individual who posted something stupid at precisely the wrong moment or a giant corporation that cut a few corners in bringing a product to market: the consequences of lightning-quick information dissemination are the great leveler. Virality brings the full wattage of a global spotlight onto decisions and omissions big and small.
When both Kia and corporate parent Hyundai made the decision more than a decade ago to forgo the expense of installing immobilizers in most of their automobiles, they unwittingly set in motion a chain of events. The result was a wave of unprecedented notoriety, a national crime wave, a jingoistic congressional flame war, and the loss of both millions of dollars and an unquantifiable amount of customer trust.
This is the story of the how a major car crime and popular culture phenomenon emerged from the lolz and likes of millions of social media users.
The Cost of Cheaping Out on Security
What is an immobilizer? It’s a simple anti-theft device that requires a vehicle’s computer to communicate with a chip embedded in a key before firing up the ignition. This not a new technology—it’s actually been required by law in all new vehicles in Canada since 2007—and it’s certainly not a deterrent to today’s professional car thieves armed with sophisticated digital tools.
What an immobilizer does is serve as formidable stumbling block to joy-riders keen to smash-and-grab. And it works. Even though it’s not a legal requirement for automakers to install immobilizers in the U.S., 96 percent of vehicles sold from 2015 to 2019, regardless of whether they featured a traditional keyed or keyless ignition setup, included this feature as standard equipment.
Unless the vehicle in question is a Hyundai or Kia, in which case the proportion drops to a paltry 26 percent. Each company churned out millions of unprotected vehicles for a 10-year period starting in 2011.
What happens if your vehicle doesn’t have an immobilizer? With the right know-how, a thief can steal your vehicle using little more than a USB cable and a screwdriver.
Kia Gets a Rep, Car Thefts Soar
The surprising ease of the thefts, using common and low-tech equipment, was little-known to most owners and observers. And so, for many years, these immobilizer-free autos flew under the radar, saving both brands a bundle of cash on the supply side of things without tipping owners off to the fact that locking the steering column would be little protection. It wasn’t until 2021 that alarms began to sound—not the honk-honk-honk of stolen cars, but rather a puzzling concentration of thefts in the Milwaukee area that soon grew into a seemingly unstoppable torrent of Kia-related crime.
That same year more than 10,000 cars were stolen in the city, which was roughly three times the 2019 tally. Of these, a full 66 percent were badged either Kia or Hyundai. Local law enforcement didn’t have to work all that hard to put together what was happening, either, because most of these vehicles were being used as props for hundreds (and eventually thousands) of TikTok videos showcasing reckless stunting on public streets. Not only that, but the videos specifically focused on how ridiculously easy it was to steal models from both manufacturers, serving as how-to guides hosted by teenagers who called themselves the Kia Boyz .
By 2022 the Kia Boyz (or Boys, depending on which region you’re watching from) phenomenon was an unstoppable online snowball, and its status as a perennial part of the TikTok app’s trending tab saw it spread across the Midwest, hitting particularly hard in Ohio. Videos of Kias and Hyundais sliding through intersections, being totaled into poles, and generally abused by whooping kids with USB cables dangling from the ignition were inspiring copycat crimes across the country. In the Kia Boyz’s wake, a crisis of clogged dealership service bays and jammed insurance switchboards emerged. Over a three-year period the incidence of theft for these vehicles multiplied by more than 11 times, and the “Kia Challenge,” as it was increasingly known, was leading the charge.
Playing the Blame Game
The effect on Kia and Hyundai owners was staggering. Not only were they taking a gamble every time they walked away from a parking spot, but they were also facing enormous insurance premium increases and skyrocketing claims denials by companies wary of financing the end results of each manufacturer’s cost-cutting. In some areas it became impossible to get a policy for either brand, and even those whose cars were recovered faced lengthy delays waiting for repairs as COVID-19 disrupted the global replacement parts supply chain.
This is the part of the story where logic dictates the companies involved swoop in with a recall solution that solves the problem and saves the goodwill of loyal customers. That’s not what happened. Instead, Kia and Hyundai tried to pin the blame on TikTok, releasing statements that condemned the service for giving the Kia Boyz a platform to spread the “secret” about their cars’ vulnerability to theft.
Unceasing customer complaints and insurance industry pressure continued to mount, along with more than a dozen class action lawsuits filed in just as many states. This forced Kia and Hyundai to make another (perhaps ill-advised) move: offering a kill switch and alarm kit, which owners would have to pay $170 plus installation fees to retrofit to their cars.
In the uproar that followed, the next round of attempts to mitigate the situation happened quickly. First it was a plan to distribute steering wheel locks for free via police stations in the most heavily affected areas—which, given how easily a steering wheel lock can be defeated, did little to mitigate the situation.
Then, in 2023, the companies promised a software update that would purportedly foil would-be Kia Boyz from absconding with immobilizer-less cars. The solution is apparently effective, using the lock button on the remote to disable certain vehicle control modules. Essentially, it’s a virtual ignition immobilizer. A vehicle with the software update, which is free, won’t start unless the remote is used to unlock it. Hyundai and Kia dealers can install the software, and the companies also hosted pop-up events around the country.
During roughly the same period, both companies reached a $200 million settlement agreement concerning their various legal troubles. The settlement is intended to pay for anti-theft upgrades, plus partial reimbursement for any losses that owners had absorbed to date.
All the while both Hyundai and Kia insisted that the real problem was the Kia Boyz and their online exploits, not their vulnerable vehicle designs.
The Digital Boogeyman
TikTok has had a tumultuous few years. On top of its Kia Challenge woes, it’s also come under fire from the U.S. Congress regarding its Chinese ownership, with legislation passed that requires its parent company to sell to an outside party or face a ban in the United States.
While it’s tempting to cast TikTok as some kind of global destabilizing force, making them by extension the catalyst of Kia Boyz chaos, it’s more instructive to view the situation as an example of how any form of social media can amplify the exploitation of a company’s strategic decisions on a massive scale.
Automakers and their suppliers have made major mistakes in the past—some arguably worse than Hyundai and Kia’s cost-cutting—but this time, the online echo chamber sparked a viral crime wave that was tailor-made for mainstream media hand-wringing. It turns out that thousands of videos of Kias fishtailing through suburban neighborhoods is more than enough to put you on the national nightly news.
Had there been a history of endlessly shared images of Ford Pintos self-immolating, or roving teens maliciously blowing up Takata airbags on camera with a well-placed hammer hit on the front bumper, then perhaps Hyundai and Kia would have thought twice about the potential consequences of an absent immobilizer. Instead, the Korean automakers became the first auto industry victims of digital clout chasing, and were caught wildly flat-footed in attempting to respond to legions of irate customers.
Oh, and about those owners: despite the money that was eventually spent to remediate the lack of theft protection on their vehicles, they are still facing down long-term Kia Boyz consequences that will persist even after the corporations involved have amortized the cost of their various interventions.
Skyrocketing insurance rates (for those who can even find a willing underwriter) hurt the pocketbooks of the generally working-class demographic that makes up the backbone of Kia and Hyundai’s affordable (and older) offerings. Then there’s the lingering question of what kind of stigma will be attached to these easy-to-steal models on the secondhand market, potentially contributing to diminished resale value and a second financial sting when it’s time to move on to a new vehicle.
The real victims of the Kia Boyz antics aren’t the massive corporations forced to deploy cash reserves to deal with a problem created by their own unwillingness to invest in their own products. In the end, it’s always the customer who ends up paying the price.