Most stolen car of 2012? The 'winner' is...
The most stolen car of 2012 isn't fancy, expensive, or even new. For the fourth year in a row, the 'winner' is the 1994 Honda Accord. Here's why the popular family car topped thieves' lists.
A logo of Honda Motor Co is pictured at a Honda dealer in Kawasaki, south of Tokyo last month. For the fourth consecutive year, the 1994 Honda Accord had the dubious honor of being the most stolen car in the United States.
Yuriko Nakao/Reuters/File
The singling out of the 1994 Honda Accord as the most-stolen car in the United States last year isn’t exactly music to the ears of owners of the popular family car. According to the latest report from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), the 1994 Accord once again tops the list, making this the car’s fourth consecutive appearance as the car thieves most love to steal.
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The ’94 Accord’s lack of security features and its popularity as the main reasons why the car is so frequently stolen. In 1997, Honda began equipping its vehicles with immobilizer systems, preventing them from running unless the driver had the key.
The NICB compiles its annual “Hot Wheels” report by crunching data submitted to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) by law enforcement agencies across the country.
Number two on the list is also a Honda, the 1998 Honda Civic. A surprise entry in the top three is the 2006 Ford F-150 pickup, the first time a truck ranked so high on the most-stolen list since the NICB began tracking thefts in 2000. Two other full-size pickups, the 1999 Chevrolet pickup and the 2004 Dodge pickup, came in at spots number seven and eight, respectively. The 2002 Ford Explorer SUV ranked ninth.
Fourth place belongs to the 1991 Toyota Camry, another traditionally best-selling family sedan. Two other sedans, the 1994 Acura Integra and the 1994 Nissan Sentra, ranked in sixth and 10th place. The Dodge Caravan, the only minivan on the list, was the fifth most-stolen vehicle last year nationally.
As for the increase in thefts of later-model vehicles, the NICB says that’s the result of thieves being able to illegally obtain replacement key codes for specific vehicles.
There is some good news though in that overall, thefts are decreasing. According to FBI crime statistics, thefts haven’t been this low since 1967.
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