These Are The Biggest Automotive Scandals Of 2024

When you hear the words “corruption, “Formula 1” and “Singapore,” you’d be forgiven for jumping straight to the crashgate saga of 2008. This year, however, there was another corruption scandal raging in the anti-corruption haven of Singapore.

Transport minister S. Iswaran resigned after being charged with corruption, and part of those charges involved allegations that he accepted gifts from Malaysian billionaire Ong Beng Seng, a hotel tycoon who helped bring F1 to Singapore and serves as the sole shareholder of the grand prix.

Reports earlier this year alleged that Iswaran received gifts worth as much as $119,000 from Ong Beng Seng, including tickets to Singapore’s F1 race and other luxurious “gifts.” As a result of the alleged bribes, Iswaran is facing 27 charges, including corruption and obstructing justice. What made the case even more shocking was the fact that the last corruption scandal to hit Singapore was way back in 1986.

Find out more about the scandal here.

After Volkswagen was embroiled in an enormous scandal relating to emission testing of its diesel engines, BMW must have felt left out as it got itself into a pickle over emissions this year too.

Germany’s motor transport authority, KBA, started proceedings against BMW over suspicions that the automaker could have manipulated emissions results for its diesel-powered X3. The case concerned the use of a defeat device in the control unit for the 2.0-liter diesel engine in the SUV.

Under testing, it was alleged that the X3 emitted less nitrogen oxides when — among other things — the air conditioning is switched off. During lab testing, air conditioners usually stay off, and people familiar with the process reported that this could be seen as a “defeat device,” which is not allowed.

Find out more about the scandal here.

It was a dramatic start to the 2024 Formula 1 season, with drama in Singapore, Lewis Hamilton announcing his move to Ferrari and Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner facing an inquiry into allegations of inappropriate behavior by a female colleague.

Red Bull said that it took “these matters extremely seriously” and launched an investigation into the allegations, which was “carried out by an external specialist barrister,” the team said at the time. Ultimately, Horner was cleared of any wrongdoing and the 50-year-old was cleared by the team’s parent company, Red Bull GmbH.

To top things off, it was later revealed that the woman who accused the Formula 1 team principal of that behavior was later suspended by Red Bull.

Find out more about the scandal here.

One emission scandal wasn’t enough for 2024, we had to have another. This time, instead of being a historic German automaker behind the allegation, it was Toyota’s turn to face a whole host of penalties over cheating on emissions tests.

In February, Toyota Industries was found to have “engaged in misconduct,” which included tampering with test data for certain engines. Models caught up in the scandal included cars fitted with Toyota Industry’s 1KD diesel engines, which can be found in Toyota’s third- and fourth-generation Land Cruiser SUVs and HiAce vans.

The allegations also hit the company’s industrial motors, such as the 1ZS and 4Y motors that are used to power forklifts.

Find out more about the scandal here.

Keyless entry is pretty great, making opening your car when your hands are full of stuff a breeze, but a dark side to the cutting-edge tech was unearthed this year. The technology was linked to increased rates of car thefts and, to make matters worse, it sounds like automakers were warned that this could happen.

Experts reportedly warned auto industry execs about the risks of smart keys more than a decade ago, according to a report published earlier this year. An investigation into keyless entry found that a piece of kit called an emulator could help would-be thieves walk away with your car in roughly “20 seconds.”

While the industry has been accused of “ignorance” over the issue, trade bodies responded by arguing that the sector was locked in an “arms race” with car thieves.

Find out more about the scandal here.

Jalopnik doesn’t have a Word Of The Year award, but if it did then 2024’s winner would probably be “markup.” We covered so many ridiculously high dealer markups over the course of 2024, reporting on everything from limited-run muscle cars to regular daily drivers.

The trend for sky-high dealership markups kicked off in the pandemic and shows no sign of stopping and, worse still, they’re putting people in bad financial situations as data shows more Americans are now underwater on their car loans.

This kind of greedy behavior is unlikely to go punished anytime soon, meaning that random dealer price hikes, markups and ridiculous pricing will probably be a scandal that continues into the new year too.

Find out more about the scandal here.

The drama at Boeing this year could spawn its own slideshow after a door plug blew out of a plane, quality control issues were uncovered and the American company was even branded a felon. In March, things got even more sinister for the plane maker, however, after ex-Boeing quality manager John Barnett was found dead.

Barnett was found shortly after he gave evidence in a case against the American plane maker in South Carolina. He had been embroiled in a legal battle against Boeing after he began calling out the company for its safety and quality control practices. Barnett, who worked at the company for more than 30 years, previously highlighted issues with oxygen tanks on the 787 aircraft that meant one in four breathing masks may not function in an emergency situation.

The 62-year-old accused Boeing of “denigrating his character and hampering his career,” a claim he took to court in South Carolina. However, Barnett was found dead in his truck shortly after being questioned by Boeing’s lawyers in the case.

Find out more about the scandal here.

A $277 scandal is still a scandal, right? That’s exactly the kind of drama that hit rental giant Hertz this year when it attempted to charge a customer for returning their rented EV with an empty gas tank. That’s right, the renter of a Tesla Model 3 was charged a refueling fee when they returned the car to Hertz.

Joshua Lee was slapped with an unexpected $277.39 charge after selecting the “skip the pump and save time” option on his reservation, which meant that he wouldn’t have to worry about any additional refueling fees if Hertz gave him a gas-powered car. Hertz didn’t, though, and instead he spent some quality time in a Model 3 electric vehicle, but was still charged the fee.

In the end, some minor online bullying did lead Hertz to reach out to Lee and apologize for the error. The company even went so far as to refund this erroneous charge.

Find out more about the scandal here.

The Chicago Police Department was found to have broken Illinois state law this year when it emerged that more than a third of traffic stops were not reported. In total, it was found that there were 200,000 undocumented traffic stops in 2023 after data was published over the summer.

Records of traffic stops in Chicago found that CPD was seemingly using traffic stops as a substitute for stop-and-frisk. The findings suggested that police in the city were continuing aggressive tactics through traffic stops, which saw Black drivers get pulled over seven times more than white drivers.

The disparity in police stops was highlighted in data shared by Chicago Police, which claimed traffic stops were down by around 74,000 between January through April. However, analysis of dispatch data found the drop was less significant at around 59,000 fewer stops.

Find out more about the scandal here.

If you’re being scammed or swindled, does that count as a scandal? I reckon so, so a parking ticket scam that swept America definitely deserves a place on this list. In parking lots from New York to California, it was found that parking tickets were being used by scammers to empty out bank accounts of honest Americans.

Fake tickets have cropped up on streets and parking lots across the U.S. and Canada, with the slips demanding fine payments from the people whose cars they’re placed on. Drivers who found fake tickets stashed on their windshields were asked to destroy the tickets, or contact local authorities to verify the validity of parking tickets before paying up.

The fraudulent slips looked nearly identical to real tickets, except for a few small differences. Most commonly, the fake tickets took drivers to a suspicious website, which, in the case of fake tickets found in Calgary, was calgaryparkplus.com. The city’s actual payment websites are calgaryparking.com/tickets and parkingtickets.calgaryparking.com.

Find out more about the scandal here.

Our final emissions scandal of the year didn’t come from another automotive giant, but was instead the result of a plucky little workshop in North Carolina.

Back in September, a North Carolina shop was accused of “conspiring to violate” the Clean Air Act after it was found that Rudy’s Performance Parts had installed and sold diesel emissions cheating devices. The shop’s owner, Aaron Rudol, pled guilty to the charges and was slapped with a $2.4 million fine from the Department of Justice and the EPA.

According to the department, between 2014 and 2019, Rudol manufactured and sold over 250,000 emissions cheating devices. The devices had “parts such as plates that block a vehicle’s exhaust gas recirculation system and pipes that replace pollution treatment components in a vehicle’s exhaust system.”

Find out more about the scandal here.

Scandal hit America’s motorsport community earlier this year when officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the offices of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. The team was accused of stealing secrets from rival IndyCar team Andretti Global.

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s head office in Zionsville, Indiana, was raided by the FBI after it emerged that one of the team’s employees may have brought secrets from their former employer over to the side. During the raid, employees of RLL were instructed to leave their computers untouched, take their belongings and leave the office.

Andretti Global did not comment on the allegations that RLL stole secrets from the team, but representatives from IndyCar said that the sport was “monitoring the situation.”

Find out more about the scandal here.

Stellantis had an awful year in 2024, with sales falling, dealers revolting and calls for change at the top. That all reached fever pitch when a key figure at the Jeep and Fiat owner was named in a tax evasion case.

Stellantis and Ferrari chair John Elkann was named as part of an investigation into alleged tax fraud in Italy. Investigators seized more than $84 million worth of assets from five people, including Elkann, over allegations that they avoided paying inheritance tax in the country.

In response to the seizure of money and assets worth almost 75 million euros ($84 million), lawyers representing Elkann said this was just a “procedural step in the case” and did not “signal any liability by the defendants.”

Find out more about the scandal here.

If things weren’t bad enough for Stellantis, company boss Carlos Tavares suddenly announced he was leaving the company at the start of December.

Tavares, who served as chief executive officer of Stellantis from day one, abruptly stepped down from the automaker after a dispute with its board over how to turn the struggling company around.

Previously, Tavares said he would stay until the end of his contract in early 2026 and Stellantis had even begun looking for his successor. That didn’t happen, however, and the automaker ended 2024 with an interim committee in charge, which was led by chairman John Elkann.

Find out more about the scandal here.