Had our car nicked last night from off the drive (house broken into, keys taken, etc. – see other thread about cat flaps).

Just wondering if we’re likely to see the car again. It’s nothing flash – bog standard 55 plate 3dr Clio with pink fluffy dice.

Anyone had a similar burglary and got the car back?

Ta
jon

Had mine stolen (6 month old car) and the insurance paid out fairly quickly. Car was found, to the surprise of the police, about 2 months after it was stolen.

My question is, would you really want it back? I didn’t.

Yeah, that’s what my gf keeps saying (it’s her car). She’s not sure if she would want it even if it did turn up. Maybe now she’ll let me have that motorbike I’ve always wanted…

I thought the odds were fairly good of getting it back. 50 / 50 or so

Police were pretty cagey about the condition/extra miles on mine when I asked them. Not sure what had happened to it given that. Keep scouring autotrader to see if it comes up as the insurance co are “disposing of it” now.

I had an XC90 lifted when the keys were stolen from my house.

Plod said it would never be seen again, and they were right. They’d have put money on it going to Romania.

Got mine back a week or so later with a few extra dents. Shortly followed by the notice from the police about somebody witnessing my car being involved in a collision 🙄

Insurance companies never pay anywhere near the replacement value and if you do get it back the car is listed as stolen recovered and again the value drops.
Sorry to say you are likely to lose money either way.

Depends I suppose. Small cheap cars get nicked for sh*ts and giggles, nicer ones get lifted by organised gangs selling them on in Eastern Europe.

Our old Fiesta (laughably easy to nick once I saw what they’d done) was nicked from a side street in Cardiff, the cops found it being badly driven by a known scrote. They then (before calling me) took it to a pound, got silvery crud all over it and the pound forced me to pay £250 to get back a £150 car that I was going to get rid of anyway. Bloody marvellous – I was very cross indeed about that. £250 to let someone else leave my car in a yard overnight. I’m in the wrong business 🙁

Anyway since the door was still bent out someone stole it again a week or so later, so we reported it and that was that, next thing we knew we got a letter asking why we hadn’t paid a parking ticket like 6 months later. Someone’d driven it til it ran out of petrol (not far) then left it in a space outside a house. House owner had pushed it out of the space onto a double yellow…

The odds of getting some of it back are considerably higher than the odds of getting all of it back, I’d guess.

If you haven’t already, notify the DVLA, right now.

As an aside,

I once sold a disposable motor to a scrote. Expecting the worst, I had the “I’ve sold this car” form in the post inside of half an hour. Sure enough, I subsequently got about a dozen “you’ve gone through a GATSO at the speed of sound” letters shortly afterwards. Replied with “sorry, sold the car, not me mate” and they went away. I shudder to think what’d have happened if I hadn’t notified them.

Insurance companies never pay anywhere near the replacement value

You do know that you shouldn’t accept their first offer of settlement don’t you?

Start scouring Autotrader, Dealership websites etc and print off adverts of similar age, spec, mileage cars (they don’t have to be in your area).

When the insurance company come back with an offer lower than the adverts decline it and provide evidence that to replace the car like for like it’s going to cost you £xxxx. They’ll revise their offer.

My car was stolen (same manner, break in and stole the keys) last Feb, at the time I was told that normally they turn up within 72 hours or not at all.

Car was stolen on the Monday night and located on the Thursday parked on someones driveway so there advice turned out to be true for me. Only damage was one section of trim, from the items found inside it looked like it had been used as a getaway car. Took about a month in total before I got the car back.

Loads of people said they wouldn’t want a car back but I like my car and it seemed less hassle than having to find a new one with the insurance money. Also I intend to run the car until it dies so not too fussed about an resale value being affected by it being stolen.

Got a Turbo Escort back the day after it was nicked from a car park in Stoke. Mate at the time was a meter reader and knew all the pikey areas so we got a few more mates together and went on a ‘tour’. Actually saw the motah waiting to turn out of a junction but by the time we’d turned round it had gone. By this time we had made half-a-dozen calls to the local plod and there were a couple of police cars in the area so we left them to it.

Got a call the next morning to say the car had been found. Basically it had been stripped of all the cosmetic bits that made it a ‘Turbo’ (inc wheels/interior/bodykit etc) and it had a few dents but otherwise OK.

Insurers were genuinely surprised that I wanted it back but after a bit of a chat with the assessor bloke the local Ford garage got the green light to fix it. Think it took them like two months but when I got it back it felt like new. Kept it for several years afterwards and quite a few people commented that it was in good nick for its age 🙂

Mine was nicked in exactly the same way. The suspicion from the police was it was nicked to sell (a Mini, no not a big fact swelled one as referred to on another thread…) but the idiots couldn’t drive and scrapped it down the gate post on the way off the drive. So it wasn’t flogged on and the guy who nicked it was caught driving it around with false plates a week after.

The garage were rubbish though and had it for over a month. Damage to door panels and new locks required. Also got new interior bits on the insurance that the garage took to be damaged by the thiefs. Nothing to do with me cramming bikes into a tiny car then….

I thought it might bother me when I had it back, but it hasn’t done. As said above, financially much better to get it back and keep it.

Depending on what the car is it is highly likely it will turn up at some point. If it’s an old small easy to nick Corsa etc then it’ll be the local kiddie scrotes wanting something to rag aroudn the countryside, it may turn up crashed in a ditch! If it’s something bigger and nicer then it’ll be a different group of people (insert word of choice) who will use it for burglaries, cash point thefts and higher level crime, again at some point it will get ditched and re-appear. I certainly WOULDN’T want my car back after scrotes had stolen it, the stuff they get up to and leave in it, no thanks.

They warned me that my car was a bit of a mess inside when I went to meet them at the garage but to be honest it didn’t look all that different to normal!

Was super clean inside and out when I got it back though. Inside especially looked like it was brand new.

I was more bothered that the police were keeping my fleece and several pairs of gloves as evidence