Posted on 08/03/2006 5:18:48 AM PDT by Cagey
DETROIT -- Whether you drive a small car or a big SUV, somebody may be after your wheels, according to a group that tracks car thefts.
Small cars that can be chopped up for parts used by street racers dominate this year's list of most stolen cars. Six of the top 10 were models of the Acura Integra. According to one analyst, the Integra's powerful engine can be swapped into a Honda Civic. With a lighter body, the Civic then becomes a fast racer.
But at the top of the list was the 2001 BMW M-Series Roadster. Thieves snatched one out of every 200 of these relatively rare cars.
Several high-end sport utility vehicles also made the top 25.
Like the small, sporty cars, they are often stripped for parts. A Cadillac Escalade's wheels and tires alone can fetch $10,000.
Add Renault LeCar to that list..
Offshoot of the Gremlin?
You should see the kids cower when I stop at a light driving my Cobra.
If you are going to pimp your Civic, you had better have the look to match:
If you are going to pimp your Civic, you had better have the look to match:
Those are usually stolen for parts by the local "riceboy" crowd. The Acura packs the High Intensity Discharge headlight system, which is highly prized by the kids with similar model-year Honda Civics. The Integra has a more powerful engine too, IIRC.
Heh...I'm guessing high milage '97 Mercury Villagers rank down around 20,978 in the most-stolen list...
But it's gotten me from coast to coast and a lot of places in between, even if it *is* potentially *the* most uncool vehicle a single gal could possibly own.
That is MYYYYY kinda car!
Brilliant. And I once achieved 50 mpg in a run from Darien to Hilton Head. It made me want to forget having to fit a set of big ends at Trenton.
I can't believe that there was not one Jeep on the list!!
I guess the parts aren't worth anything - and that is a bad sign.
Just another reason to make sure you lock it up, and use the club and take off your stereo face, and take your TomTom 910 with you.
It is a jungle out there.
That BMW roadster which somehow top[s the most-stolen list looks to me very like a refugee from a bumper-car ride at a very lower-class amusement park. Why anyone would steal it is beyond me, unless it were to be stolen by a design critic who wished to hide it from impressionable youngsters. If my body shop turned out a repair that looked like that, no insurance company on this planet would ever pay them.
Those BMW chaps have achieved the impossible: i.e., spent hundreds opf millions to design a sports car that is by far worse looking than the Pontiac Aztec, the Daimler V8 2-seater and the TR7.
yes! my 64 effie is safe, it would seem. *nods*
You forgot the Ford Mustang II (early 70's). I think it is a law that all these found must be crushed.
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