Car thieves' delight: '95 Honda Accord

12-year-old model state's most stolen

A big seller when new, the 1995 Honda Accord has proven a dependable used car, too, with many still on the road. But there's one feature that probably didn't show up in the owner's manual. "It's easy to dispose of," said Sears Sauls, general manager of Hendrick Honda in Charleston.

Plentiful, undistinctive and hot-wire friendly, the 12-year-old vehicle was the most stolen make last year in South Carolina, the National Insurance Crime Bureau said this week. Another 1995 Honda, the Civic, was the No. 1 stolen vehicle nationwide.

Newer cars and trucks, with hard-to-destroy vehicle identification numbers and high-tech features ranging from global positioning systems to keyless ignition, hardly cracked the top 10 national and statewide lists.

Car thefts cost an estimated at $7.9 billion in losses last year. But thefts have dropped for three straight years, including last year's 3.5 percent dip to 1.19 million from 1.24 million the year before. The same can't be said in South Carolina, where thefts increased slightly last year to 16,402 from 16,358 in 2005. Put another way, every year 1 in about every 207 cars is filched in the state, costing nearly $110 million in insured losses.

"Auto theft certainly contributes to what we pay for our auto insurance in South Carolina," said Allison Dean Love, executive director of the South Carolina Insurance News Service, an insurance industry group. "The more we can do to make our vehicles less attractive to thieves and prevent theft, the more we can keep our cost of auto insurance stable."

The S.C. Insurance News Service offers these protection tips: Use common sense, such as locking the car and taking the keys; park in well-lit areas and hide valuable items; use visible or audible warning devices on the car; use immobilizing devices such as switches, fuel cut-offs or smart keys; or install tracking devices that help police recover vehicles and return them.

Honda Accords and Civics from the early to mid-1990s are easy prey for a couple of reasons.

The body style was copied so much that they're indistinguishable from other sedans, making them harder to identify, said John Reynolds, detective sergeant of the North Charleston Police Department's property crime division.

Also, Honda ignitions are easy to "pop" with a screwdriver or other tool so that they'll start without a key, said David Fair, auto theft sergeant with

Charleston Police Department.

Other popular vehicles to steal, police said, are early model Jeep Cherokees as well as the Ford Taurus, which is more valuable for parts. Still, local police say joy riding or "casual" car theft, in which vehicles are stolen more for transportation, is the overwhelming reason for thefts here.

Newer cars aren't pilfered as often because they have computer chips in ignition systems and other anti-theft devices, a process that began around 2000, Fair said. Nonetheless, he said that "key-related thefts" — cars stolen after owners leave engines running, keys broken off in the ignition, cars with valet keys or other spares — have shot up from 25 percent of all thefts to half in the last two years.

"A car can have all the technology in the world, but it comes down to who has the key," Fair said.

While local police said theft rings aren't common here, the national crime bureau cited at least three economic considerations for stealing autos:

--Exports. It is not unusual for stolen vehicles to be shipped intact to other countries where buyers can have them for a fraction of what they would legitimately cost and with no questions asked. The bureau has a Foreign Operations group that helps get the vehicles back. In 2006, more than 4,000 vehicles valued at nearly $42 million were returned from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Lithuania, Mexico, Nicaragua and Italy.

--Owner give-ups. The owner makes a false theft report. Vehicles are driven into ponds, lakes or quarries, set on fire in sparsely populated areas, or even driven over the border and abandoned. Give-ups can be motivated by economic factors: If a person owes more on a vehicle than it's worth, having it stolen allows the owner to walk away from the debt.

--Chop shops. These take apart stolen vehicles and sell their parts to individuals, dealers, body shops. They can sell the parts from older models for more money than the vehicle is worth intact.

To report vehicle theft or insurance fraud activity, call the South Carolina Insurance Fraud Hotline at 1-888-95-FRAUD or call the NICB at 1-800-835-6422. For more information about vehicle theft prevention and lists of the most frequently stolen vehicles countrywide, by state and 34 largest metropolitan areas, visit www.nicb.org.

Reach Jim Parker at 937-5542 or jparker@postandcourier.com.