I have a deal on a 2019 Grand Sport...

[LATB]

Originally Posted by Murray

It’s the only place to break in. Unless you’re silly enough to also have a window.

Windows in a garage is also not silly. Most prefer it.
And you’d be surprised how easy it is to break into a residential garage door.

Of course the best anti theft protection is to live where you don’t have to be afraid of being robbed.

[6spdC6]

Originally Posted by Raazor

A really good thief isn’t using a hanger.

A bent piece of 1/4-20 threaded rod works much better! Its still small diameter and much stiffer. Most doors I have seen have the center mounted operating chain or screw.

I have removed that pull rope and taken out the lever its attached to. Think about it, how often do you need to pull that release system.

[Murray]

Originally Posted by bsmith

you said it was "the only place to break in", which is false.

🙄 you forgot to list drilling a hole in the stucco big enough to crawl through. That and your scenario are unlikely

[LATB]

Originally Posted by OnPoint

Use the new vette as bait and do a stakeout. Then beat the ever loving shit out of them.

And end up in prison.

[Don Rickles]

It started the day you moved into the house.

People saw your moving trucks and everything you brought into the house.

“Hey man, did you see the new guy, see the size of him! And yo how bout all that cool shit, those cool cars! Yeah, I dig that Vette man…. Hey man, wanna make some money, I know a dude that knows a dude….he can grab those cars and we’ll get a cut! Yeah man, man the call!”

Bet your ass!

[DDSLT5]

Originally Posted by Murray

🙄 you forgot to list drilling a hole in the stucco big enough to crawl through. That and your scenario are unlikely

I remember thinking it would take a man 600 years to chisel through the walls of Shawshank with that rock hammer.............old Andy managed it in just under 20!

[Murray]

Originally Posted by Don Rickles

It started the day you moved into the house.

People saw your moving trucks and everything you brought into the house.

“Hey man, did you see the new guy, see the size of him! And yo how bout all that cool shit, those cool cars! Yeah, I dig that Vette man…. Hey man, wanna make some money, I know a dude that knows a dude….he can grab those cars and we’ll get a cut! Yeah man, man the call!”

Bet your ass!

You’re reading way too much into it. Opportunity. Drove by and saw the car(s) parked in the driveway. If in the garage they are still there today.

[Murray]

Originally Posted by DDSLT5

I remember thinking it would take a man 600 years to chisel through the walls of Shawshank with that rock hammer.............old Andy managed it in just under 20!

He saw Frank do it at Alcatraz

[LATB]

Originally Posted by Murray

🙄 you forgot to list drilling a hole in the stucco big enough to crawl through. That and your scenario are unlikely

reductio ad absurdum

[Don Rickles]

Originally Posted by Murray

You’re reading way too much into it. Opportunity. Drove by and saw the car(s) parked in the driveway. If in the garage they are still there today.

I’m not saying that that is not possible. But in all likelihood, it’s somebody close by. They may be done with him now, but bringing home another shiny VETTE in my opinion would not be the right move

[GTOguy]

Originally Posted by Don Rickles

I’m not saying that that is not possible. But in all likelihood, it’s somebody close by. They may be done with him now, but bringing home another shiny VETTE in my opinion would not be the right move

I agree. He's on their short list. Unless he holds a vigil and waits for them. Still, if he kicked their ass into next week, he would go to jail and they would own his house. That's how pro-crime communities work.

My solution would be to buy a beater and chalk it off to not being able to have nice things, or flat out move to another area, preferably out of the country. And then have nice things again. Up to Flex.

I worked with an older black guy 45 years ago and he was from South Carolina. Used to tell me wild stories about running untaxed cigarettes, and liquor in his '68 Charger. He got caught, and did time. He knew a guy down there on a farm who had a brand new '64 T Bird, with the roadster 2 seat kit on it...Kelsey Hayes wire wheels, Rangoon Red/red, the whole nine yards. It got stolen and he got it back, fixed the damage, it got stolen again...joyriders, etc. Out in the country in SC. He ended up connecting a bundle of dynamite to the ignition and left a warning note on the dash that said if the car was started it would explode. A couple of weeks later, the man was awakened by the sound of an explosion and they found what was left of two guys. The car was history, and the local law didn't prosecute, because of the warning note. Not sure if this actually happened (it was around 1965 or so) but the guy telling me the story was not a bullshitter.

[Onebadcad]

Originally Posted by LATB

And end up in prison.

Irony, or even more exact, hypocrisy, thieves go unpunished, but protecting what you have gets you a 6 X 8.

[Onebadcad]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/24/w...-epidemic.html

For Car Thieves, Toronto Is a ‘Candy Store,’ and Drivers Are Fed Up

An epidemic of auto thefts in Canada’s largest city has left many residents exasperated, with some getting creative about deterrence efforts, such as installing bollards in home driveways.

Published Feb. 24, 2024
Updated Feb. 25, 2024

Whenever Dennis Wilson wants to take a drive in his new SUV, he has to set aside an extra 15 minutes. That’s about how long it takes to remove the car’s steering wheel club, undo four tire locks and lower a yellow bollard before backing out of his driveway.

His Honda CR-V is also fitted with two alarm systems, a vehicle tracking device and, for good measure, four Apple AirTags. Its remote-access key fob rests in a Faraday bag, to jam illicit unlocking signals.

As a final touch, he mounted two motion-sensitive floodlights on his house and aimed them at the driveway in his modest neighborhood in Toronto.

But all of these security gadgets, Mr. Wilson is convinced, will do no more than delay what seems inevitable: Toronto’s seasoned auto thieves won’t be deterred by the defensive gear, and they’ll make off with this Honda SUV just as they did with its predecessor — and its insurance replacement, which they returned to steal.

“By no means do I think that I’ve stopped them,” Mr. Wilson said. “All I’ve done is made it take an extra 10 minutes to steal my car.”

Tire locks and a bollard are some of the other visible security measures Mr. Wilson has installed.Credit.
While there has been a surge in car thefts across Canada — up 24 percent in 2022, the most recent year nationwide statistics were available — the scourge has hit the Toronto area particularly hard, creating a mix of paranoia, vigilance and resentment.

So pervasive are car thefts in Canada’s largest city, up 150 percent in the past six years, that the issue has become something of a common bond among vehicle owners. If not a victim themselves of a theft, or thefts, many people seem to know someone whose car was swiped, and just about everyone can instantly recall one of the car theft headlines that news outlets have had plenty of opportunity to publish.

Social media groups have formed to crowdsource help for car sightings. But the comments are filled with people telling owners to resign themselves to the fact that their car is probably already in a shipping container headed overseas

“Organized crime is becoming more brazen, and the international black market for the stolen cars is expanding,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking this month in Ottawa at a hastily convened auto theft summit.

The meeting was intended to reassure Canadians that the government was aware of the issue and that it was considering a number of responses, including increasing penalties for auto thieves, investing in the border agency and banning imports of key fob hacking devices.

The government is not only aware of the problem, it also hasn’t been spared: Two government-issued Toyota Highlanders were stolen three times in Ottawa from the current and previous justice ministers.

Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party, has repeatedly criticized Mr. Trudeau on the issue, calling the government excessively lenient in bail and sentencing for offenders.

The police have received new funding, including for better surveillance equipment, but the profit motive for thieves — as much as 20,000 Canadian dollars, or $14,800 per car — has, so far, made the problem intractable.

Car thefts have escalated to “national crisis” levels, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, an industry group, which said insurers paid out a record 1.2 billion Canadian dollars, or about $890 million, in theft claims in 2022.

“I was not able to digest the truth that the car had been stolen,” said Kamran Hussain, whose leased 2022 Toyota Highlander was stolen in January. Mr. Hussain’s work as a telecom field sales representative requires him to have access to a car. He’s borrowing one from a friend while he weighs what to do next.

“Either I have to buy a new car or I have to switch jobs,” he said. “I have no other choice.”

Demand for vehicle tracking from insurers in Ontario has about doubled business at Tag Tracking, a Montreal-based company, in the past two years, said Freddy Marcantonio, its vice president. Quebec insurers often require the Tag system for high-risk cars in the province, which for decades has grappled with auto thefts largely because many thieves favor Montreal’s port for getting their hot wheels quickly out of the country.

Thanks in part to the well-known prevalence of tracking systems in Quebec, thieves have turned to Toronto for easier pickings.

“It’s like getting a credit card and telling a kid to go in a candy store and buy whatever you want, and that’s why they moved to Ontario,” Mr. Marcantonio said. “It’s a free market for them there.”

But as criminals have adapted their behavior — “I like to say they have Ph.D.s in cars theft,” Mr. Marcantonio said — so have Toronto’s car owners, with many motivated to take a step as simple as clearing the junk out of their garages so they can stow their cars at night.

Homeowners are increasingly looking for solutions to protect their driveways, too, with some winning the praise of the police for installing bollards, as Mr. Wilson has done.

The bread and butter of thieves are the most prosaic cars, like Mr. Wilson’s Honda CR-V, or Ford F-150 trucks. Luxury cars are trophies.

Some wealthy collectors store their cars in secret locations with round-the-clock security and dogs at night, but thieves can still win out.

Nick Elworthy wanted to get every last detail exactly right on his Ferrari, from the stitching down to the unique color, a candy-apple red slightly deeper than the sports car’s signature shade. He got to drive it only a few times before it was stolen last summer.

But the police in Ottawa stumbled on it when an officer noticed a Range Rover being backed into a shipping container on a rural property. A second car in the container was Mr. Elworthy’s Ferrari.

“I was absolutely ecstatic when I got the call from that officer,” he said. “I was literally jumping up and down.”

Most drivers discover they’ve become victims when confronted with the initially baffling sight of an empty parking space.

When Myra White couldn’t find a 2021 Jeep Wrangler that she was sure she had parked at a residential corner in downtown Toronto, she first doubted her memory before she realized it had been stolen. To her surprise, the police found it in a rail yard, with a smashed rear passenger window.

“It’s something endemic in the city,” Myra White said of car theft in Toronto. A car she had parked was stolen but later recovered by the police.

“I’m trying to think of what we’re going to do with the car when we get it back because I don’t want, of course, for it to happen again,” said Ms. White, an executive at a Toronto logistics company. “It’s something endemic in the city.”

For the exasperated Mr. Wilson, there has been one recent consolation to being a Toronto car owner: This year’s mild winter means he hasn’t often had to pull out his heat gun or de-icer spray to unfreeze his multiple locks.

Given that he bikes to work — and given all that is required for him to try to fend off the thieves who hanker for his Honda — he said his mind is made up on what his next move will be if he is victimized again.

“If they steal this car, I think I’m done,” he said, adding, “When they come with their antenna and they put it by the window, the only two fobs they’re going to pick up are the two cars that they’ve already stolen. I left those for them.”

[GTOguy]

Canada ought to allow the use of deadly force for car thieves. Just like horse thieves in the American West in the old days. That shit would stop within a week.

[Bill]

YouTube

Use the right KIND of plastic tub to avoid this kind of mishap.

[dvarapala]

Originally Posted by Murray

You’re reading way too much into it. Opportunity. Drove by and saw the car(s) parked in the driveway. If in the garage they are still there today.

I guarantee you the thieves are not among FLEXie's neighbors.

[Don Rickles]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

I guarantee you the thieves are not among FLEXie's neighbors.

If it happened once, I might agree. Sweeping thieves but twice, there’s a snitch.


Guarantee it.


I know, park the sons car on the driveway!

[LATB]

Hate to say it but I would move.

[Don Rickles]

OP, Did you hire a moving company?

[dvarapala]

Originally Posted by Don Rickles

If it happened once, I might agree. Sweeping thieves but twice, there’s a snitch.


Guarantee it.

Right - because thieves never return to the scene of a crime unless someone tips them off that there's more booty to be had.