The only major car crime I have bee at the receiving end was where our front door was forced and the wife’s handbag was grabbed and they made off with both our cars 🙁 Pretty common nowadays, and probably the easiest way to steal modern cars. I almost caught one of them, but luckily I had the common sense to not stand in front of the car as it was driven off. On the same night ours went several other cars in the area where also stolen. We now have slightly less desirable cars so luckily haven’t had a reoccurrence, although maybe the fact I was stood there in my boxer shorts has scarred them for life.

I am sure the car should warn you if you leave a door slightly open, my van toots the horn!

It does, it unlocks again and it may flash the lights not really sure.

BBC watchdog covered the remote blocking transmitter thing.

Please share with everyone you know in the hope that we can frustrate these thieves…

It’s been years since I read these words last. They’re the hallmark of cut and paste email nonsense!

WorldClassAccident – Member
My merc has remote card sensor activated locks. If I walk away with the key card in my wallet it automatically locks. When I walk back I simply touch the door handle and it unlocks.
***
Now whenever I leave the car I have to trust it has locked itself. I have returned a couple of times over the years to find it unlocked.

How do you know it wasn’t locked? 🙂

Its worth noting that on many cars if you lock the door with the key rather than the remote the alarm doesn’t arm.

I had a BMW mini hairdressermobile for a couple of years, and I was puzzled to twice find unlocked and the windows part or fully open, but nothing stolen or tampered with.

It would seem that if you put your mk1 bmw mini key in your back pocket and then sit on it, (activating the “hold button down to unlock and open windows cos its a hot sunny day” function) the transmittter works from inside your house. Or indeed the back room of a patient’s first floor flat in the roughest bit of town. 😳

Oh, by the way – new manual ordered:

£45! 😡

Somebody stole the covers for the side repeaters from my car last year!

I can only assume someone had done the same to them, and they thought it easier to take mine than spend a tenner on a new set.

^^^ the sort of low-value crime that is extremely annoying and nothing else. bastards!

Somebody broke into my car once, carefully removed the door trim, disconected and removed the speaker, replaced the trim and locked the car. Seemed like a lot of effort to get a second hand speaker that could be had from the local breakers for a fiver!

I left our car unlocked, some bugger opened the glove compartment and nicked the sweets.

Also left key in the door overnight the other day, and everything left there.

I suspect a 13 year old golf might not be top of the thieves’ list.

Once while suffering from concussion I left the merc parked at a jaunty angle at the end of Southampton train station car park unlocked with all windows down.

When I found it (no memory of drivingit there or parking!) there were a few workmen looking at it. Apparently they thought it was a drug dealers car that had been dumped. They were daring each other to open the boot to see if there was a corpse inside 🙂

My old car (mk1 Laguna) was broken into once outside my house. Well I say broken in but I could have left it open as there was no sign of forced entry.

Anyway, someone went through my glovebox and emptied its contents onto the passenger seat but nothing was taken. Not even my cd’s – I was actually a bit offended by that 😀

edit:

Just remembered my first car, a Fiat Uno. My friend in school had one two and one day we discovered our keys would both unlock and start each others cars. Being old I guess the barrels must have been worn?

I was quite amusing going for a spin at lunch time only to find your car parked in a totally different spot to where you had left it.

Not even my cd’s – I was actually a bit offended by that

Years ago I had a car stolen in Bristol. Not only did they ignore my tape collection they objected to it so much they left their own cassette in the player when they fianlly abandoned it.

I had a Mk1 Opel Manta, lovely car, but it was ridiculously easy to get out and lock your keys in it. The door lock was a silver slide in the door, and force of habit meant that flicking it along when getting out of the car, then slamming the door, meant that the embarrassment of looking back in at the keys still in the ignition was immense.
Did it one day at St Catherine’s near Bath, and fortunately there were some other people about, who let me try their keys. A Triumph TR7 key opened it just fine!
I then discovered that the small, flat screwdriver blade on my Swiss Army knife would open it just as easily…
Those were the days. 😆

Yeah, old cars were often a breeze to get into. I’ve opened many, many friends’ cars over the years cos of the old “lock my keys in the car” trick. I’ve got a drawer full of old car keys as a relic of this; useful to have something of a broadly similar size as a starting point to bumping / picking the lock. Though I opened something – a Mk2 Escort? Maybe – with a 2p coin once.

Years ago, my grandad was halfway home from work in his Allegro before he realised that he was in fact driving his boss’s very similar Allegro. Turned out the keys were identical.

I had an Astra SRi and then a cavalier for a while in the 1990s

It was so easy to break into them (ruining the locks in the process) that I used to leave them unlocked but with the steering wheel removed and D-locked through the chassis in the boot.

I had a 1988 astra, I once drove it from Fife to Bristol and it was only when I tried to lock it in Bristol that I realised I’d left the car keys at home and had opened it and driven it with the keys to a Mercedes T1 instead. Turns out you could unlock it and drive it with anything vaguely key shaped, it was only locking it that called for the car’s own keys

If I walk away with the key card in my wallet it automatically locks.

I had a toyota out on hire over xmas. If after a long drive you leave your girlfriend sleeping in the car while you go to get a chinese….. you get a text from you GF saying ‘Help’ and return to find the car you’d left unlocked has now locked itself and has the alarm blaring. 😳

My brother just sent me this. As it’s vaguely relevant I’ll pass it on…

Please BE WARNED! Over the last month I have become a victim of a clever ‘Eastern European’ scam while out shopping.
Simply dropping into Tescos for a bit of shopping turned out to be quite an experience.
Don’t be naive enough to think it couldn’t happen to you or your friends.

Here’s how the scam works:

Two seriously good-looking voluptuous 20-21 year-old girls come over to your car as you are packing your shopping into the boot. They both start cleaning your windscreen, their breasts almost falling out of their skimpy T-shirts.
When you thank them and offer them a tip, they’ll say ‘No’ and instead ask you for a lift to another supermarket store, in my case, Sainsburys. You agree and they both get in the back seat. On the way, they start undressing, until both are completely naked.

Then, when you pull over to remonstrate, one of them climbs over into the front seat and starts crawling all over your lap, kissing you, touching you intimately, and thrusting herself against you, while the other one steals your wallet!

I had my wallet stolen on November 4th, 9th,10th, twice on the 15th, 17th, 20th, 24th and 29th. Then again on December 1st, 4th, 6th, 10th and 13th and twice yesterday.

So please warn all the older men you know to be on the lookout for this scam. The best times are just before lunch and about 4:30 in the afternoon. P.S. Poundstretchers have wallets on sale for 1.50 each but Lidl are 1.45 and look better.

When I lived in that London I once parked up the car (Merc S65) and was mugged for my keys by three eastern Europeans; apparently they are a popular model amongst the gangsters in Albania. I didn’t bother to put up a fight, it’s only a car after all. F**ers took my phone as well so I couldn’t call the police until they were well away.

My mate had his catalytic coverter stolen from his Qashqi last week, parked on street outside of his house!