One of the factors that keeps car theft going in the United States is the reliability of old Hondas.
Think about the advertising possibilities! Hondas are built so tough that thieves want them no matter how old they are. If you’re wondering what this is all about, Barro is explaining why car thefts in New York City have declined by 96 percent over the past couple of decades. In a nutshell, the answer lies in high-tech ignitions:
The most important factor is a technological advance: engine immobilizer systems, adopted by manufacturers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These make it essentially impossible to start a car without the ignition key, which contains a microchip uniquely programmed by the dealer to match the car.
Criminals generally have not been able to circumvent the technology or make counterfeit keys….Instead, criminals have stuck to stealing older cars. You can see this in the pattern of thefts of America’s most stolen car, the Honda Accord. About 54,000 Accords were stolen in 2013, 84 percent of them from model years 1997 or earlier, according to data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
This has created a virtuous circle. Only old cars are vulnerable, and they aren’t worth much. That makes it less lucrative to run illegal chop shops, which makes it harder for thieves to sell their cars. This in turn allows police forces to concentrate more resources on the small number of thefts (and chop shops) remaining.
In any case, it turns out that Hondas remain the most stolen cars in America because they’re still worth something even if they were built before 1997. Looked at a certain way, that’s a badge of pride. In another decade, though, even Hondas from the Seinfeld era won’t be worth stealing. And that will put car thieves almost entirely out of business.
