According to Indian authorities, over the course of five years—yes, five—a total of 900 car engines mysteriously disappeared from the Kia factory floor, only to be discovered missing during a recent year-end audit. That’s not an engine here or there. That’s entire shipping containers full of powerplants vanishing like socks in a dryer. The kind of disappearance you’d expect from a Bond film with a forklift and a grudge. If you roughly crunch the numbers, it adds up to slightly over 2 engines a day being stolen over five years.
Stealing Kia Engines Like Packs Of Gum
The theft, according to local police, wasn’t the work of a couple of rogue forklift drivers with side hustles. No, this was planned. Phased. Coordinated. “It is certain that some insiders are involved,” said Penukonda deputy superintendent of police Venkateswarulu. The current theory? A tag team of present and former Kia employees quietly spirited engines out of the plant while cooking the books to cover their tracks.
It’s worth doubling the point here: these aren’t thumb drives or steering wheels we’re talking about. These are car engines. A 1.6-liter four-cylinder hybrid engine—like the ones used in the Kia Carnival Hybrid—is not something you tuck under your arm and stroll out of the building with. These engines, fully dressed, can weigh up to 400 pounds. You need equipment. Logistics. A plan. And a whole lot of nerve.
Certainly The Engines Got Gone In Shipping
Initially, the cops suspected the engines were taken during shipping—somewhere in the long trek from Tamil Nadu in the south to the Kia plant farther north. But that theory collapsed when internal audits pointed directly at the plant itself. Somehow, over five years, nearly a thousand engines were lifted right out from under Kia’s nose.
Now, look—engine theft isn’t exactly unheard of. But it’s usually a one-off. Some chop shop grabs a few salvageable motors off wrecked cars, maybe pulls a crate motor from a warehouse if they’re feeling spicy. What we’ve got here is grand theft motor. A slow-burn inside job that evaded detection for half a decade.
Kia Factory Numbers
For context, Kia’s Indian factory cranks out up to 400,000 vehicles a year. So yes, 900 missing engines won’t halt the assembly line. A Kia spokesperson confirmed production remains unaffected. But that doesn’t make this less bizarre. You don’t just misplace nearly a thousand engines.
The bigger question, though, isn’t how they disappeared—but where they went. That’s a whole lot of horsepower floating around the black market. Are they in street builds? Gray-market exports? Stashed in a warehouse somewhere, slowly gathering dust next to fake brake pads and off-brand spark plugs?
Nobody knows. Not yet.
Police have launched a multi-city investigation and formed three special teams to chase leads across the country. Kia, for its part, is staying quiet—likely on advice from some very serious lawyers. All we know for now is that someone made nearly a thousand engines disappear in broad daylight. And for five years, nobody noticed.
Source: Kia Global, Road & Track
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