Most people who lose a car to thieves never learn what happened to it. However, an Australian four-wheel-drive builder who posts as @SamYoung4x4 says his stolen LandCruiser, the plated truck fans called the “Naughty 40,” has finally turned up. According to him, it came back cut into pieces and dumped in a swimming hole that only just dried out.
“For 1,465 days, the Naughty 40 has been missing,” he says early in the video. In that time, he says, there were no updates and no leads.
A Message Out Of Nowhere
Then, on a Friday afternoon, a stranger messaged him. During a video call, the man shows him a roof, a bull bar, tool boxes, pieces of doors and the truck’s original number plates.
The clincher is a rude sticker that a friend once stuck on the firewall, he says. According to the man, he and his friends had swum in the hole for years. Only now, after months without rain, had the water dropped enough to show the parts.
He says the spot sits beside a main road near Springfield, about 20 minutes from where the truck vanished. So he calls the local police, who advise him to confirm the find and phone back.
Pulling The Stolen LandCruiser Out
That night, he heads out with friends, the man who found it, a LandCruiser 79 and a trailer. At the hole, they find the bonnet cut down the middle and the roof sliced off.
Inside a canvas bag, they also find his old gauges and a stack of his stickers, packed with rocks. “They filled it with rocks so it would sink,” he says at 13:22.
In his view, the thieves panicked once people started searching online and dumped the pieces at the closest spot. Getting them out was hard too, because the loaded trailer lifts the rear wheels of the 79 on the climb out.
Before they leave, the man who found the parts hands back the original plates, which he had already pulled out and cleaned up. At the hole, the owner also points to coins he and a fabricator once used to patch holes they cut for a snorkel, because that detail leaves no doubt.
Closure, Four Years Later
The next morning, he lays the pieces out at his shed. He says he feels angry and sad, but also relieved. “Happy because we’ve got closure. We know what happened to this car,” he says.
He also answers critics who called the theft an insurance job, and says the build gave him the confidence to go full time.
He also says the truck took him all over Australia, which is why losing it hurt so much.
How To Make A Stolen Project Easier To Find
His story holds a few lessons for anyone with a project sitting in a shed:
- Keep a tracker powered, because one with no battery can’t report anything.
- Photograph unusual details, like stickers and patched holes, since they can prove a find is yours.
- Report a theft right away, then update the police when something turns up.
- Ask before you drive off with recovered parts, so the report stays accurate.
Where Things Stand
He plans to keep the bonnet, the roof and the plates. Meanwhile, the man who found the wreck kept two mud guards for his own truck. The video mentions no arrests or charges, so the account here is his. He says someone still needs to answer for the theft and asks anyone with information to contact him.
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