Yes, a hidden kill switch will stop the joyriders, and that’s the ones who will try to steal an undesirable car because they don’t care about what the car or its parts are worth. A professional won’t be stopped by a kill switch, but he’s looking for a car he can strip and make money selling the parts. The pro will leave an undesirable car alone, there’s no money in it for him.
Also, cars were easier to hotwire in the '60s. No steering locks, etc.
Theft resistant ?
= UGLY !
Yes, the plainer the better. Don’t entice them by having something that initialy looks too nice. In fact , buy a crappy looking used car for it’s properly working mechanicals and KEEP it ugly. cosmetics like faded paint, a dent or two, primer spots, AM radio ( at least for anyone looking in the window) will send potential thieves right past your car without a second glance.
Over the past 30 years I used to play weekends in a country/rock band at the local bars. When I got my brand new 92 Explorer I was a bit concerned leaving it in the lot during work. It is black and no roof rack, so if I left it dirty it looked quite plain and drew no ones attention. I never had any break in problems in all those years because of “ugly”. ( despite the fact that it had the o.e. JBL premium sound sytem, trailer tow, positrack, & XLT pack. )
Anything British or Italian. They’ll need to tow it.
Actually, your cars were among the most stolen cars ever, because they’re very common, their parts are not especially cheap (not expensive either), they aren’t particularly hard to steal. Mostly it’s that they’re very common (which means a big market for parts).
I had an Accord in a high-theft area…besides having an alarm and parking like 5 feet from my front door, I also parallel parked in a space 18 inches longer than my car. My car was also beat to crap and no less than 3 different colors.
The common wisdom that Camrys and Accords are at the top of the theft lsits due to parts pricing is a total myth. Virtually all of these lsits are by total number of cars stolen, and these two models happen to be at or near the top of the number of units sold also.
Let’s do the math. If there are twice as Camrys on the road as say Odysseys, and there are twice as many Camrys stolen, the odds of one or the other being stolen are exactly the same. Cars are stolen for joy-riding or for parts. Things like catalytic converters have big value, can’t be traced, and aren’t used for the part itself but for scrap. More popular models may have a slightly higher incidence of theft, but not so much as the insurance lists would lead you to believe.
Besides that, there is not a car on the road that can’t be stolen, and the locks are completely irrelevant.
Actually, the insurance companies express theft rates in terms of number of vehicles stolen per hundred insured. So, no, just because there are more on the road of one type, the theft rates are not skewed by that. If there is one thing the insurance companies understand, it’s statistics.
How about a Pontiac Aztec? You could leave the keys in it and it might not get stolen…