I’d like something simple. I hide a gadget somewhere on the car, and if the car gets stolen, I phone its telephone number, and it tells me its GPS coordinates. Perhaps there is a one time cell-phone connect “pay as you go” fee, but no monthly fee. No bother, not fuss.
Is there something like that available? If so, what is the cost for the gadget? & the cost for the one time cell phone connection pay as you go fee?
Apple air pods. Four for $100. Used for tracking things and people on your phone. Don’t know how it works. But people have been unknowingly tracked.
Keep it simple, if they steal it, they can wreak it…
Just use your imagination on where to put it…
I would think most would come closer to stealing your 70 truck then your 92 Corolla… lol
Make sure the switch kills the spark but not the crank. If it cranks and won’t start, they are less likely to suspect a switch.
But it can still be towed away.
And Bing is thinking of Apple AirTags, not pods.
Heh heh heh. Correct. Air tags like poker chips, not those things you stick in your ears.
As @Bing suggested, AirTags (although he misnamed them, don’t hold it against him… L 
L…) seem to have some pretty impressive stories associated with them… The Batteries last about a year and here is a story of getting back some property, although not a car, but still pretty impressive…
Apple Airtags are a rip off of Tile. They operate using Bluetooth UWB and require that an iPhone be near by pick up the signal. There are iPhones everywhere so this works quite well. But it won’t find your car that is parked out in the woods away from the public.
Thieves can see if an airtag is near by. It’s a feature to let someone who is being stalked know that an airtag is present.
Here’s another vote for using an Apple AirTag.
Just put it in the glovebox, trunk, or some other hidden location, and you can generally “find” it wherever it goes. Noting the exceptions like middle of nowhere, out in the woods, desert, etc.
When George eventually decides to replace one of his 40 or 50 year old vehicles, he will likely be surprised to learn that many modern vehicles have associated Smartphone apps that display the exact address where the vehicle is currently parked. That is in addition to the ability to remotely lock the doors or start the engine/activate the A/C.
As noted earlier, how will this work if the vehicle is out of range of Bluetooth or any iPhone?
There are some cheap devices with cellular connections that basically have a lifetime subscription to their service. These include e-readers and such. I am sure there might be a way to hack such a device or chain another device to it and use it to track the car, provided cell service is available at that location. This could be powered off the car but would have to have a timer once the car is turned off as to not run down the battery. Maybe put some sort of battery powered charge pack inline and have the ignition switch turn it off when the car isn’t running. I have charged phones off a larger one of these for several days and it barely put a dent in the charge level.
I remember seeing something like this on some cheap tablet at Wal-Mart several years back. It had a lifetime cellular connection and you got 1TB of storage in the cloud for life. I am sure eventually the device will die or the band will be discontinued but you would get several years out of this. The thing was only like $99 so no big loss when it becomes useless…
OR you can buy a new car with all this built in. Some of us are a little paranoid when you have an unelected bureaucrat or tech company serving as the judge, jury, and executioner of certain mandates. We saw this during the pandemic and now some are talking about “climate lockdowns” where you can only go out certain days of the week to limit emissions. Geofencing, where you are only allowed to drive within a certain distance of home or within a boundary such as your county or state, could also be done.
I personally like having a car that isn’t sending out telemetry out the entire time you are driving. Of course cell phones and credit card purchases can fill in the gaps but these are not connected to your car with the ability to shut it down.
I wonder if these tracking/communication features can be disabled in new cars or if doing so would put the car in some type of limp mode or disable it altogether.
Or void the warranty is in the case of Tesla.
It’s not a perfect solution, I admit.
Normally you would wire the kill switch to the fuel pump. In George’s case though they likely have mechanical pumps though, or at least the truck. So maybe just take the rotor and put it back in every month to get groceries.
Since it is a slow day, I remember when the day janitor stole our pick up truck at work. Just got out of jail so suspect he got a quick course there. At any rate the police were less than helpful so we went looking for it ourselves. Found it about a mile away so figured the guy just needed quick transportation. We would have given him a ride. He was nice enough to smash the distributor so that no one could steal it before we found it. All in all an honorable thief. Not at all like our church business director. But that’s a new story.
@Bing, I can not imagine that in the middle of one of your winters, you would want to hang over the hood of your car while unscrewing the distributor cap, and if you have a GM car, unscrew the rotor too…
Many years ago, I used the coil-kill-switch as depicted in the video that @davesmopar shared. But I put my kill switch on the bottom side of the driver’s seat near the seat adjustment. But instead of the flip On/Off Switch, I used a Push Button On/Off Switch…
It was nowhere as obvious as opening the glove box to flip a switch; anyone seeing me would only think I was adjusting the seat…
That worked great right up the time my car was hard to start and I did not know if the switch was in the On or Off position… 
After that, I clipped an alligator clip to the underside of the seat so I could easily jump the connections so I knew the connection was closed if the car was hard to start… 
The price seeems right for the Apple air-tag (around $30 ea presumably) , but from what I can tell the downsides (campared to a GPS tracker)
So far I’ve not found any product that
The “buy a new car” and “hidden switch” solutions, both are good backup plans.
Does the Apple Tags work with this phone?? Asking for a friend above… 
I’ve never been concerned with theft myself but I wired up a fuel shut off in the kids Acura after it was stolen. I put it on the upper part of a coin pocket or something. You’d really have to look for it but by that time the battery would be dead. Closing barn door as they say. For you city folks that means closing the barn door after the horse got out.
You’re not going to find a device that can communicate over a cell phone network without paying for it to be on that network.