NHTSA Complaint #11432922 — 2015 HYUNDAI SANTA FE

On August 12th 2021, I was driving the engine started making a knocking/tapping sound. As I accelerated it sounded like something broke off, bounced around then shot out the bottom of my vehicle. My vehicle then started to smoke and leak oil all over the road. I pulled over and turned the engine off. We found the part that flew out of the engine, it was the connector rod. It had snapped off into two pieces and shot through the oil pan after passing through the engine causing irreparable damage. There were no warning signs, no check engine or oil lights, nothing. This happened out of the blue. Our safety as well as the safety of others were put at risk not only when the part flew out of the car and could have hit another vehicle, but it almost caught fire and it could have caused an accident had we nowhere to pull off the road, as traffic was heavy that day. This vehicle has been at the Hyundai dealership since August 13th 2021. It has been inspected and determined it in deed needs a new engine, the cause was connector rod failure.