Friday 6th July 2012
Engine thefts at Holden factory
Employees pinching V8s worth £1.6 million. Strewth, etc...
Holden workers in Elizabeth, Australia are under investigation after a police operation uncovered they have been stealing parts from their own factory and selling them on.
This one made it with engine and 'box fitted...
The police have been involved since January this year; they now say more than £1.6 million of engines and gearboxes have gone. Intended for the marque’s Commodore VE (what we know as a Vauxhall VXR8 or a 'Pommodore', if your name is Riggers), Holden would typically sell the V8s for $10,000. Rumours are currently circulating that the stolen engines were being sold on for just $1,500.
You may wonder how workers can leave a factory with engines intended for the cars they assemble. It puzzled Holden officials also. Well, according to sources, “no effective tracking system” ever existed for monitoring engines and transmissions when they arrive at the factory. This meant the thefts could quite easily go undetected, and makes you how long it took before someone realised they were using a lot of engines…
Holden is investigating the issue but have not released further details yet. In the meantime, someone Down Under is probably sticking another V8 on the barbie.
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The Danimal
Original Poster
165 posts
24 months
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Makes me think of the Johnny Cash song "One piece at a time"!
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Beefmeister
10,807 posts
99 months
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Mental image of a guy in shorts flip flops, a vest and one of those hats with corks around it, walking out of the factory with a V8 in a wheelbarrow...
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Life Saab Itch
34,059 posts
57 months
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There's a joke in there about Aussies being descended from convicts... 
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carinaman
3,144 posts
41 months
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There's a book called In The Red, by a former Red Arrows pilot that was always into his motors and rallying. It seems quite a rare book so takes some searching to find a copy, but during and after his RAF days he was into his road rallying and doing historic rallies after his time in the military. He mentions an Australian friend and doing an historic rally in Australia and having that blighted by someone stealing the carburettors off his car while it was at the docks, and made some point about low level theft there really taking the shine off of the country. I've relatives there and been there once, and in the short time I was there I didn't experience any criminality though I returned to my hire car one day, which identified me as a pomp as I'd parked with the OS next to the curb facing oncoming traffic, to find a pair of knickers laid on the curb next to the driver's door. I'm not sure that what that was about, but as they were clean and not brown I don't think it meant they thought my parking was sh*t. I can't say I've experienced much theft here. Had cars vandalised several times though and the family did once have a Cortina stolen while parked in town on a match day, and once sold another Cortina to a chap who then failed to register it which meant we were almost done for offences in a car that was no longer ours. http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyI...I doubt those chaps or the people at BMW that decided having access to an active OBD port when the alarm is set are Australian.
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FourWheelDrift
56,439 posts
153 months
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Crikey Bruce, how did they get away with that? I'll throw another steak on the barbie. 
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carinaman
3,144 posts
41 months
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Hold em or hold it?
That wheel design on that yellow one is criminal!
And I don't like the gaping Audi mouth on Audis and I certainly don't like it there.
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jeremyc
9,675 posts
153 months
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article said: This meant the thefts could quite easily go undetected, and makes you how long it took before someone realised they were using a lot of engines… I reckon some of the PH employees have been stealing words from articles ...
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carinaman
3,144 posts
41 months
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That yellow one has eyebrows atop the Audi gaping mouth that look a bit like the top of BMW kidneys to me.  Sometimes 'stylists' really should have their hands caught in doors in unfortunate 'accidents'. It just looks like they're mimicking the German brands to me. If it aint broke...........
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carinaman
3,144 posts
41 months
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I wonder how Elizabeth feels about it?
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VinZ
7 posts
13 months
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I know there was a theft at a truck factory over here. An entire pallet of truck batteries was stolen.
How on earth did they get an entire pallet of truck batteries out of the front gate? They noticed the theft within hours.
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djfaulkner
640 posts
87 months
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Is that gearstick in your pocket?
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davepoth
19,892 posts
68 months
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mad4amanda
1,075 posts
33 months
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Have you seen the size of an Aussie lunch box ?
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redvictor
3,059 posts
106 months
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Reminds me of the old BL days with Rover V8 engines disappearing at an alarming rate.... 
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badmrphil
8 posts
10 months
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is that 160 engines that have gone "walkabout"?
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chris116
508 posts
37 months
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redvictor said: Reminds me of the old BL days with Rover V8 engines disappearing at an alarming rate.... I was just thinking something similar, some of the things that happened at Longbridge were amazing.
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VictorMeldrew
8,271 posts
146 months
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Reminds me of a story about theft of mercury from a company I worked at once. It was going on for years and the loss had been noted but no-one could work out how the stuff was being taken. No-one thought to ask "old Bob" why he always pushed, never rode, his bike home from work, until one day it fell over ...
My first thought was of the Johnny Cash song though (as someone already posted).
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NinjaPower
2,318 posts
49 months
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This doesn't suprise me one bit. The scale of 'petty theft' in large companies or organisations is staggering. A 'friend of a friend' came out of the Navy after about 18 years and has a house full of stuff. Just as one example, he nicked camping equipment for his whole family (5 of them) from work, tents, sleeping bags, jackets, mats, clothing, stoves, pots, pans, torches, food packets, water barrels, pumps, solar showers... you name it. Then his mate that also worked with him in the Navy for about 10 years must have nicked literally hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of fuel and other stuff, single handedly. They did aircraft refuelling for a while and nicked about hundreds if not thousands of litres a week in jerry cans and sold it to farmers and mates for use in diesel cars and plant etc. One very regular scam was when they would be on fuel duty and have to drive all over the UK in those OSHKOSH articulated Fuel trucks. They used to stop at a normal garage where they could use an Army/RAF/Navy fuel card, but instead of filling the trucks tanks they would fill about 20-30 Jerry cans purely from themselves (to give the impression from the receipt that they had filled the truck), then when they truck itself actually needed refuelled they would fill it from the tanker on the back that they were supposed to be delivering to a helicopter landing site! I s  t you not if you wanted a generator, tools, diesel, clothing, supplies... these boys would get it. Incredible.
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carinaman
3,144 posts
41 months
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badmrphil said: is that 160 engines that have gone "walkabout"? Someone should have told them that Jenny Agutter has long since got out of that pool.
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VictorMeldrew
8,271 posts
146 months
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carinaman said: Someone should have told them that Jenny Agutter has long since got out of that pool. 
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