Apologies if already posted, but worth taking the chance. Enjoy.
The equivalent today is a stick shift. 
Back in the day, that may have been a real impediment to the casual thief. Today, it’s worth enough they would just drag it up on a roll back flat bed and drive off with it…
As they say- locks only keep honest people out and confusing controls weed out the ignorant thieves
Thanks for posting, was enjoyable read!
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I once had a customer that when I went out to move her vehicle to a bay, I could not get it to start no matter what I did, I called her and she yeah, simple, just unlock the doors with the Fob, get in and turn the key on and depress the clutch pedal, then hit the drivers door unlock button, then start the car… I was like WTF?? That is NOT normal and you should really tell someone that when dropping your vehicle off for service and or repairs… And it had to be in that order… lol
New guy back in the 90’s with a FoMoCo something, but you had to push and hold the washer button on the end (tip) of the wiper switch arm to start the vehicle, yes he wired in a kill switch to the washer spray button… lol
Funny what some people do for theft prevention… But like Twin Turbo already said, a locked door is only there to keep a honest man honest…
A friend bought a convertible and was advised to never lock the doors, as the radio was much cheaper to replace than the radio and a new top that was cut…
I know somebody who owned a Simca, back in the '60s, and it was so bad that she would park it–unlocked–on the street in Manhattan in the hope that someone would steal it. To her consternation, nobody ever stole it, so my answer to the question of, “Is there any car thieves can’t steal”, my response is … a Simca 1000!
Obviously, thieves could steal it, but nobody wanted to.
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My friend left his car at the end of the driveway and forgot he left the keys in the trunk, nobody stole it, he was both happy and a little hurt that nobody wanted it… 
This is like the bear joke.
You don’t need to have a car that is impossible to steal. Just one that is harder to steal than the next one in the lot.
You didn’t need a key to start our 58 Chevy unless you used the key to turn the switch all the way to lock. Just convenient. Never got stolen. Kids went to the reform school if they stole a car. But then a garage is a pretty good deterrent too.
No, any car can be stolen. Some are easy to track and recover. EVs are the hardest to steal as a group and Teslas are nearly impossible to steal. They are also far easier to recover than other brands because of GPS tracking. There are several ICE vehicles that are very difficult to steal and it’s mostly because of the sophisticated deterrent systems on board. Here’s a blog from a security company explaining this issue.
This Lotus might qualify:
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While there may indeed be cars configured such that thieves wouldn’t be able to figure out how to start and drive away, they can still usually be stolen, winched up onto the bed of a flat-bed truck as mentioned above is one common method.
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I’ll speculate that less than 5% are carried away.
In California there were 202,893 vehicle thefts reported in 2023, 85.4% were recovered. Very likely nearly all recovered vehicles were abandoned, most stolen vehicles are used for joy rides.
I’d guess about the same, not very many hauled away on flat-bed w/o owner’s permission. Some sort of jostling- detection loud audio alarm might be helpful for preventing these. Best with a gps tracking backup.
A rollback tow truck is a very slow process for towing a car away, that is why they are not (or rarely) used by repo men, use a snatch truck and if it is a 2wd vehicle normally (unless it has to be dragged out and then grabbed from the other end) it can be grabbed in a mater of a few seconds and moved away enough to strap it down safely… If you have a helper or two, then even an AWD can be snatched up fairly quickly using wheel dolly’s for the other 2 wheels…
So if I was going to steal a vehicle using a tow truck, it would be with a snatch truck not a slow rollback…
Fun fact, a buddy of the shop I used to own had the 2nd or 3rd snatch truck in middle TN, he could grab and move vehicles around the yard like they were toys, we also had a repo sling truck that was faster, but only could use it on vehicles with rear bolted on steal bumpers, now it would be all but useless… Had 2 large pins you could slide in the bar that caught the bumper…
I also used it to tow my 1995 Intrepid after it got hit in the front end and totaled, I was able to back up fast enough that when the bar hit the bottom of the bumper it just slid up the straps and grab it and got out and chained it in about a minute or less and was ready to be on my way, the cop said he had never seen anything get hooked and towed off that fast, snatch truck were only used by repo at the time, the rollback that was there was slowly loading the other vehicle up, he gave me a dirty but impressed look… lol…
Loved that old truck, highly modded for 100% stealth mode to sneak up on a vehicle, could not tell until you saw the boom rise up out of the bed, it was a 1 ton single rear-wheel with added leaf’s and a dually proportioning valve… If you had too much weight on the back, it would pull the front wheels off the ground, a little less weight and you had to tap the brakes to make a turn… lol … It could handle a 1 ton dually box truck front the front, if grabbing the back to move enough tot get to the front, the tires were bouncing off the ground, hence tap brakes to turn…
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Driving off with a car - some are harder than others. But I don’t know any vehicle that can’t be towed on a flatbed.
I have no doubt about your skills and experience!
I have watched a number of shows with repos and illegal parking towing and those guys seem to struggle with the dollies a lot of the time. I guess it also depends on the situation- how the vehicle is parked and access to it, whether it is AWD or not etc. I have watched them pull up, snatch it, drag it out, drop it, pull around to the front, snatch it again and get out of dodge far enough then have to pull over to affix the wheel straps… meanwhile, often chased by angry owners. I’d prefer less opportunity to get mixed up with an angry owner even if it took slightly longer to load. 
With those newer “stinger” set ups, they can snatch just about any car, from any angle while sitting in the cab. But you still have to deal with AWD and/or parking brakes, in gear etc. The guys coming to pick up my junked or donated cars always have a roll back and even drive them up on it when they can. They winched one with frozen brakes about 15 feet and were off in no time.
Speaking of quickly stealing cars- there was a bunch of hoodlums stealing motorcycles with a van and swing arm w/winch. Pull up alongside the bike, swing the arm out, strap the bike, winch it up and push the arm back inside w/bike. They were very fast with that arrangement but got caught anyway…
About a year ago (in the fall, during hunting season…) a member of our social group had her Escalade stolen. As she explained it, she stopped at a Wawa for a cup of coffee. She took her credit card out of her purse and went inside to buy the coffee. When she came out, her car was gone…
Later that day, it was found by a hunter who heard a vehicle driving around the woods and then a crash. He went to investigate and found the car still running (her words…), airbags deployed, smashed into a tree. There was no one around…
She told us the insurance company totaled her car. What amazed her was that her purse, with all it contents intact (cash, credit cards, phone, etc…), was still in the car, untouched.
The Wawa security video only showed a single person wearing a hoodie getting into the car. Since the vehicle was only used to “Joy Ride” the police suspect a teenager took the car…
A few months ago, she visited us and I noticed that she did not have her purse with her, only her phone, and I asked if she left her purse in the car, she asked, why would she need it? I told her so her car did not take an unscheduled ride again…
Some folks never learn…
Did she turn the Caddy off and take the keys with her when she went into the store?
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A repo man can/will grab a vehicle and drag it out of sight no matter if the other 2 tires are being dragged down the road, they don’t care if it flat spots your tires, and it will flat spot the heck out of your tires, once out of sight and safe, they will move around to the other end if needed and strap it down and or slap the dolly’s under it and off they go… Repo men are like any other profession, some are good, some are not… lol
This is only about repos, which can carry over to stealing a vehicle for a pro thief, no joy rider kid is going to use a tow truck to steal a vehicle…
And Yes, I prefer my vehicles be towed by a rollback…
My shop partner made a tool for the old GM FWD’s that he could sneak in through the fender well and pop the shift cable off and knock it out of park really fast (once you practice it a lot) so it could be towed with drive wheels down until safe enough to drop and swap and strap down…
Yup!
At the end of each month, I get the local PD’s Police Blotter emailed to me. In almost every case of a stolen vehicle, or a vehicle from which someone’s possessions were stolen, the cops noted that the vehicle had been left unlocked and with the keyfob inside the vehicle.
In the case of the vehicles which weren’t stolen, and which “only” had objects stolen, some of the items that were allegedly stolen from the unlocked vehicles have included Smartphones, laptops, expensive cameras, and–supposedly–thousands of dollars in cash.
I like the idea of the cable popping tool. No doubt, if you’re serious about the job and value your safety, it would behoove you to develop tools like that to speed things up
I also used to like watching that show where they repossess planes and boats. The planes were interesting in a number of ways. One, without the log books, the value went down significantly. Two was they would have the feds after them on occasion as messing with aircraft is a federal crime.
What always baffled me was the extent people would go to, to hold onto things they didn’t really own…
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