Luxury vehicles are probably as enticing to those who steal them as they are to those who buy them, but the overwhelming majority of stolen cars in the U.S. each year continue to be from nonluxury brands. A new report by the Des Plaines, Ill.,-based National Insurance Crime Bureau shows that thefts of newer luxury vehicles stolen between 2010 and 2013 totaled 5,570, a small fraction of the millions of vehicles stolen across that same four-year timeframe. In addition to being a smaller percentage of total cars on the road, NICB spokesman Frank Scafidi said the cars are just getting harder to swipe.
Related: Thieves Still Favor the Honda Accord
"The numbers show that the improved antitheft technology on these luxury vehicles has made them very difficult to steal despite being attractive targets," Scafidi told Cars.com.
NICB's luxury-vehicle theft report comprises an analysis of data from the National Crime Information Center's stolen-vehicle file, focusing on 2010-13 thefts of model-year 2011-13 luxury cars in three categories: compact, midsize and premium. Among these, compact had the highest theft rate, with 2,625 cars reported stolen, followed by midsize with 2,245 and premium, 700. Scafidi said NICB recently made a decision to refrain from naming specific makes and models. For example, in last year's report covering 2010-12 model-year luxury cars stolen between 2009 and 2012, the top five most-stolen cars were the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, BMW 3 Series, Infiniti G series, Mercedes-Benz E-Class and Cadillac CTS.
Of the nearly 5,600 cars covered in the latest report, 963, or 17 percent, remained unrecovered as of Dec. 31, 2013. The compact and luxury categories had a 15 and 16 percent recovery rate, respectively, while nearly 30 percent of premium vehicles remained unrecovered, which NICB states "is indicative of their value in the illicit vehicle market." The top five states for luxury-vehicle theft were California (alone accounting for a quarter of the total with 1,390 thefts), Florida (863), New Jersey (570), New York (462) and Texas (338) — unsurprising considering four of the five are the nation's most populous states.
For some perspective, according to NICB's "Hot Wheels" report, released this past summer, determining the most stolen car overall for 2013, the top 10 comprised more than 217,000 of the projected total of less than 700,000 for the year; the Honda Accord alone accounting for just under 54,000, nearly a quarter of the top 10 and 8 percent overall. Other entries on that list included nonluxury vehicles from Chevrolet, Ford, Toyota, Dodge, Jeep and Nissan.
After a slight increase in overall U.S. vehicle thefts in 2012, the FBI estimated a 3.2 percent reduction for 2013, with a total of less than 700,000. Vehicle theft peaked in 1991 with nearly 1.7 million reported incidents and has been on a steady decline in subsequent years.
Nikolai Okhitin/iStock/Thinkstock
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