Which Cars Are Stolen The Most Often?
We all know that it’s probably not a wise idea to leave your car unlocked on a dimly lit street overnight if you want to see it again in the morning. Most of us know enough to at least lock the doors and take other measures, including garaging the car if our house has a garage or at least shutting the gate if all we’ve got is a driveway or carport. Nevertheless, there are some cars that are thief magnets, just like some cars are cop magnets.
Surprisingly enough, it’s not the flash new sports cars such as Porsche 911s that are the thief magnets (cops are another story). The ones that tend to get nicked are the ones that are common – which means that they are harder to trace and more likely to end up in a chop shop with parts being swapped around to make a “new” vehicle out of the old one. In the list put out by the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council , you won’t find a number of the more glamorous marques on the list of vehicles stolen most often between April 2015 and March 2016. Looks like the light-fingered rotters out there just aren’t interested (much) in BMW, Porsche, Audi or Mercedes-Benz. Either that or the people who own these can also afford good garaging and security systems. The ones that go AWOL most often are marques like Holden (mostly Commodores), Ford (especially Falcons) and a handful of Nissans and Toyotas.
So which cars are on the top 20 list for vehicles stolen most often in Australia? Do you need to run out and buy a noisy car alarm and a bull terrier to keep your favourite set of wheels safe? (Actually, Staffordshire bull terriers are great family dogs that get on well with kids and don’t need much grooming as well as being good home security systems, so I’d always recommend getting one, but that’s another story). Here’s the list for 04-2015 to 03-2016, complete with model series and model year (MY) range:
- Nissan Pulsar N15 MY95_00: 831 vehicles nicked
- Holden Commodore VE MY06_13: 827 vehicles nicked
- Toyota Hilux MY05_11: 795 vehicles nicked
- Holden Commodore VT MY97_00: 683 vehicles nicked
- Holden Commodore VX MY00_02: 602 vehicles nicked
- Holden Commodore VY MY02_04: 571 vehicles nicked
- Ford Falcon BA MY02_05: 570 vehicles nicked
- Holden Commodore VZ MY04_06: 479 vehicles nicked
- Ford Falcon AU MY98_02: 432 vehicles nicked
- Toyota Hilux MY98_04: 399 vehicles nicked
- Hyundai Excel X3 MY94_00: 369 vehicles nicked
- Nissan Patrol GU MY97+: 332 vehicles nicked
- Toyota Hilux MY12_15: 323 vehicles nicked
- Ford Falcon FG MY08_14: 311 vehicles nicked
- Nissan Navara D40 MY05_15: 307 vehicles nicked
- Toyota Corolla ZRE152R MY07_14: 291 vehicles nicked
- Holden Astra TS MY99_05: 284 vehicles nicked
- Toyota Hiace MY90_04: 277 vehicles nicked
- Toyota Landcruiser 80 Series MY90_98: 275 vehicles nicked
- Holden Commodore VF MY13+: 273 vehicles nicked
The trend, according to the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council website, is that cars from the 2000–2010 period tend to go walkies most often, with 42.8% (that’s nearly half) of stolen cars being from this era; cars from the decade before that (1990–2000) and the decade after that (2010–now) are about even at 22.9% of car stolen and 23.8% respectively.
Regarding the when and where cars get stolen, the most common time for a car to get stolen is between 4:00 p.m. and 7.59 p.m. on a Friday afternoon/evening, followed by 8:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. on Saturday night. In other words, when you’re having the end of the working week drinkies or hitting the pub on Saturday, it’s best to put your car in a very safe place!
If you own a 2000s era Ford Falcon or Holden Commodore, you are probably starting to get a bit nervous about now. What can you do to help protect your car? What’s more, you also need to protect your car keys, because if a thief can get his or her hands on the car keys, the job of nicking your vehicle is much easier.
Here’s a few tips for keeping your car and your keys safe (there’s more on the website):
- Make sure that your front fences and hedges are kept to a good height so they don’t give a thief a good hiding place from the street (time to call Hedge-Trimming-R-Us?)
- Motion-sensing security lights help deter thieves.
- Don’t put your address on your car key tags. If you lose your keys and a rotter finds them, he or she will know exactly where to go.
- Don’t hide spare keys on or around your car.
- Store your car keys where they aren’t visible from the windows easily (so that convenient set of hooks by the front door is out).
- Install a gate – the more a rotter has to do to get into your place, the less likely he/she will be to try. Put a lock on the gate if you don’t have one on the garage or if you don’t have a garage.
- Get a garage.
- Get a dog – even a yappy little Chihuahua will let you know if someone is poking around where they shouldn’t.
Car Safe – Entrapment from NB content on Vimeo.
A wee warning about car alarms: we all know that they can go mental and decide to go off at odd moments. I remember very well the time that the Mazda Bongo van we once owned had an alarm go mental like this in the carport. My husband rushed outside to investigate and switch the ruddy thing off… without putting any clothes on first. Unfortunately, a passing policewoman also came to investigate… At least she was smart enough to realise that the guy in the nude fooling around with a car with an alarm going berserk was probably the owner!
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