Britain redoubles efforts to beat booming car-theft business

Press, 31 March 1989, Page 30

Britain redoubles efforts to beat booming car-theft business

The most theft-proof car in the world, guaranteed to baffle any teenage joyrider, has been on show this week in London.

The Rover prototype “concept car,” bristling with a dozen of the latest, state of the art, anti-theft devices — from infra-red locks to a computer-pro-tected radio system — has been the star of a Home Office crime prevention conference. The British Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, has been advised by an official working group representing police, manufacturers, and insurance companies that urgent action needs to be taken. Britain has now the worst incidence of car crime in Western Europe. With a car being stolen every 30 seconds, and with vehicle crime being responsible for a third of all reported crimes in Britain, car stealing is a staggeringly ’ profitable business estimated at more than £1 billion annually. The vast majority of those engaged in it are opportunists — 71 per cent of car thefts are carried out by those under 21, virtually all of whom are male. But there is also a hard core of professional thieves who make very rich pickings. According to insurance experts, the car most likely to be stolen, the villain’s “favourite motor,” is the Ford Cosworth, a special two-litre version of the Sierra which is so quick that police forces around the country complain that they can’t catch it in their standard production models. Other models favoured by thieves are

ADAM RAPHAEL, of the “Observer,” examines recent ideas in the fight against car crime.

the Ford XR3 and the VW Golf GTI, together with classic luxury cars like Rolls Royce, Aston Martins, and Jaguars.

Most of these are stolen by joyriders and are found wrecked and pillaged. But an increasing number never turn up, having been stolen to order and shipped overseas for resale abroad.

Seven years ago three quarters of the 333,000 cars stolen were found, usually within two weeks. In 1986 only two thirds of the 412,000 cars reported missing were ever recovered. If the Ford Cosworth is the quickest to disappear, London, Liverpool, and Glasgow are, say the insurance experts, where your car is guaranteed to vanish fastest. Mr Bruce Gordon, of St Katherine Insurance, which specialises in insuring exotica, say sadly: “It used to be just joyriding, but they now wreck the cars.”

After years of indifference, the big manufacturers are finally waking up to the scale of the crime problem. The British Standard on car door locks, “BS AU 209, part one” published in October, 1986, laid down that a car should be able to withstand attempts to unlock it for up to four minutes. However, the Consumers Association’s magazine “Which” published a stinging report earlier this year which

showed that only one car out of 56 tested, the Vauxhall Carlton CDi, resisted an expert’s assault on its doors for as long as 25 seconds. Four others, the Ford Granada 2.0 Ghia EFi, the Mini City, the Mazda 626 2.0 GLX, and the Rover 820 Si, resisted for up to 20 seconds. The other 51 all succumbed within 10 seconds.

Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Clark, of the Metropolitain Police Stolen Vehicles Department, complains: "Why do manufacturers continue to fit locks costing a few pounds to cars that sell for more than £20,000?”

The traditional response of car manufacturers to awkward questions such as ones on lack of security was to say that it was a competitive marketplace and that their customers were not willing to pay any extra for!? either safety or security. “Whatever you do, if the thieves are going to steal the car, they will steal it” said a Ford spokesman. But attitudes appear to be changing, judging by the latest marketing hype. Vauxhall has recently introduced a special deadlock system on its new Cavalier model, which is proof against the tools used by casual thieves and cannot be forced from inside even if the windows are smashed. The company is so proud of its achievement and confident that it will boost sales that it has already begun to boast that it is losing millions of pounds worth of business in supplying spare windows and radios to replace those smashed by thieves. The

Consumers Association has also admitted to failing to break into the latest VW Passat which also has a deadlock system.

The new Rover “antitheft” concept car, which went on display this week at the Home Office’s standing conference on crime prevention, has even more advanced devices. Five suppliers, Bosch (alarms), Triplex (glass), Philips (radio), Schlegel (door seals), and Neiman (locks) have worked with Rover over the last year to produce a car designed to defeat the casual thief.

“What we are trying to do,” said Denis Chick, Rover’s product affairs manager, “is to make things difficult for the opportunist thief. Deadlocking is a deterrent, but it does not go far enough.”

Rover wouldn’t claim that even the concept car is proof against professional thieves. There is also the question of cost. Creating a Fort Knox on wheels is expensive and motorists may well balk at having to fork out an additional $l5OO for the latest anti-theft systems. If insurance companies were to start levying high excesses on those who live in crime-ridden, inner city areas as well as offering discounts to those who protect their cars, the . cost-benefit equation might change. So far they have been reluctant to do so on the grounds that theft claims represent only a small percentage of premiums, about six per cent. But if the car heist epidemic continues, both manufacturers and insurance companies may need to

think again

In 1987 there were more than one million reported crimes involving cars — 658,577 thefts from vehicles and 389,575 thefts of vehicles.

“I. am absolutely convinced,” says the Home Office Minister, John Patten, "that simple market pressure is going to force motor manufacturers all over Western Europe into introducing more stringent security measures.”

One approach to the car theft problem, apart from tighter vehicle security, is to try to change the teen-age psychology which equates joyriding with a macho game of hide and seek. Old banger clubs where young motoring enthusiasts are encouraged to strip and repair old cars have been set up in Birmingham and London aimed at weaning persistent offenders into more constructive habits.

Another promising initiative is a central computerised register of insurance claims made on stolen vehicles established by the Association of British Insurers. This has already turned up some interesting results.

i Motorists, too, could do with re-education. According to the Consumers Association survey, 40 per cent of car crime is never reported. Even so, the police devoted nearly a million hours last year in a mainly fruitless investigation of car crime. And still one in every five motorists does not even take the elementary precaution of always locking the car.