Be warned
Any old excuse from the insurance companies…
Give me a flat-bladed screwdriver and I’ll get you into a Mk 2 Astra is seconds too. Cars have always been easy to nick if you know what you’re doing.
Can your cars still be nicked if the battery is dis-connected?
Yes. You need a bit of rope and an old van.
Top ten most stolen cars, makes a change not to see a Metro or Cavalier on it
- Mercedes-Benz C-class
- BMW X5
- Range Rover Sport
- Mercedes-Benz E-class
- BMW 3 Series
- Land Rover Discovery
- Range Rover Autobiography
- BMW M3
- VW Golf
- Audi RS4
I don’t own any of those, so I’m alright jack.
Neither do I. But nearly everyone else round here owns a least one of those.
A couple of years ago a work colleague with a Vauxhall Meriva, everyday he’d go out five minutes before leaving at the end of the day to start the engine to warm it up and leaving it running.
I always thought it was a stupid idea as a car stolen with the keys inside would be very difficult to claim for with insurance.
The car obviously thought the same as one day, after gloating he had the next couple of weeks holiday while we’d still be working, he found the doors had locked with keys in ignition and engine running.
After a couple of minutes thought I managed to get the door open using something available at work. I took less than 30 seconds to do as well with no damage.
Car security has never been all that, unless it’ll help sell cars manufacturers aren’t usually interested.
The article doesn’t clearly distinguish between what Mazda calls “remote keyless entry” (press a button on the plipper) and “smart keyless entry” (press a button on the car while the plipper is in your pocket).
My Mitsubishi has the latter and sure enough it is on the list of vulnerable cars (happily it is not especially desirable so not on the “most stolen” list).
I doubt whether there is actually any difference between the system on the Mazda CX-5 listed as vulnerable and that on the MX-5 ND Sport Nav (with smart keyless entry) that isn’t.
The Arctic (like the SE/SE-L Nav) doesn’t have the ‘smart’ keyless entry and I’m not unhappy about it; nevertheless, if a thief with an amplifier were to break into the car, he would still be able to start it. I always set the superlocking (deadlocking) mainly to make theft from the car more difficult but it does also put another obstacle in the way of the car being stolen.
But as is often said, if they really want it, they’ll take it. Happily for us, both the dismantlers and the joy riders seem to prioritise high performance or ‘prestige’ German cars.
Sometimes it’s an advantage to own a car popularly associated with tonsorial artistry.
Because its click bait. The actual content doesn’t really matter. You’ve clicked on it.
Not for long apparently. Of course there is a reason why those cars are on the list. And its nothing to do with those being particularly easy to remove from a parked spot.
9 times out of 10, if these cars are ever recovered, its from the back of a container at Tilbury, or a yard in Lagos, Dubai, Manila, Karachi, excepting the Golf (which I hazard a guess is a random addition, to add a plebian flavour tothe list). The real driver for these cars disappearing is not the locking system (who cares about locks when you have a low loader and a pair of tin snips) but the ease at which cars can be loaded onto a ship. You enact legislation putting the onus on the shipping companies, the freight forwarders, to ensure that what they ship is legit. Anyone see the Phillipino’s government’s stunt to crush cars that were imported without paying duty? Among the cars was a Jag S-Type, still on UK plates.
Also an MX5.
These cars aren’t stolen to become a difficult to sell Gumtree item (who buys a £50k RR off Gumtree), uits because they have buyers on the other side of the world lining up.
I’m not sure what the regulatuion is here, but in the US, if you want to ship a car out, you need to show the authorities the so-called pink slip. If you don’t own the car, or have the car on finance, you don’t have the pink slip (the bank will lierally have the pink slip in the basement). Hookey US cars though do show up in various parts of the world, and the US is the largest exporter of used cars.
Do the dockets at Tilbury, Southampton really show that a container is down as having 3 Range Rovers crammed in it, or is it always “car parts” and no one bothers to check?
Ironically, as JLR now goes through periodic shutdowns to reduce its holding stock, the rate of thefts will likely increase.