These are your worst car theft stories – Jalopnik

It’s easy to forget that car theft has been around as long as there has been on-street parking. Theft from transportation is so pervasive in American culture that it predates the modern automobile and the U.S. Constitution. Before automobiles, horses were a common target for thieves. In 18th century Pennsylvania, horse thieves were branded as punishment. Repeat offenders were marked with the letters H and T on their foreheads. That’s after being tortured for over an hour while strapped to a pillory, but I digress.

We asked our readers last week for their worst car theft stories, and the responses were overwhelming. There were even some comments that exceeded the character limit for one post. However, you were all eager to share your heartbreak and your stories of frustration. The thefts themselves ranged from complicated multi-vehicle schemes to hectic crimes of opportunity. Without further ado, here are car theft stories you will never forget:

One month family vacation – first we went camping in New Hampsire and then we headed north of the border to Montreal. Large caravan with 3-4 cars + a 1994 F150 with all camping gear, lots of luggage, etc., which acts as a tail vehicle. Camping was great, and so was the first week in Montreal, until one morning we woke up, looked outside the hotel and noticed the F150 and everything in it was missing. The police were called and they eventually found the truck a few hours later, but everything was gone. Luckily it was just the camping equipment and a few other things. I know how crazy it sounds to leave all that stuff unsecured in the back of a truck, but it was the 90s and it was Canada.

Submitted by: Michael Almeida

My car was stolen in college, I filed a police report and a week later I got a call saying it was at a tow yard waiting for me to pick it up. Apparently the thieves finally abandoned it when the gas ran out.

I went to pick it up from the tow company and had to pay over $400 to get it out, despite reporting it immediately after it was stolen the week before. They didn’t even have it in that garden; they had moved it to the long-term lot, so I had to travel half the city to even see it. When I get there it’s trashed and won’t even start. I couldn’t afford to have it towed anywhere, let alone get it repaired. I was given the option of them taking it off my hands for about $200 or whatever, or I continued to rack up storage fees until I took it out myself. I really had no choice.

Basically, in college I essentially had the pleasure of paying $600+ for my car to be stolen.

Submitted by: JayWantsACat

I was at an ex-work’s Christmas party, which was held in the evening at a local restaurant. The parking lot for this restaurant was across the road, in a dirt parking lot with no street lights. About an hour into the party, a woman came running in and said someone had broken into everyone’s car by smashing the side windows. At the time I was driving a 2009 Pontiac G8 GT, which I had purchased a month earlier. Everyone ran outside to check their cars, and out of everyone, mine was the only one that hadn’t been broken into. I have no idea why they saved mine, they thought it had an alarm or that they had good taste in vehicles. Who knows.

Submitted by: Nick B

Two cars were once stolen in the same night. My girlfriend spent the night with my brother and I. I had an MGB and she had an Austin-Healey Sprite. My brother came home late and asked why my MG was parked around the corner with the lights on. I looked out the window and it was gone, just like my girlfriend’s Sprite. I walked over to where my car was and found that it was plugged in correctly but just wouldn’t start. Praise Luke, God of Darkness! The thief (or thieves) had apparently gone back to get my girlfriend’s car. It was recovered a few days later, and when I popped the hood I discovered that the battery had been replaced with a much larger battery from another car. The police officer told me they had received a report of a battery stolen from a Buick not far from where it was recovered, but said, “Keep it.”

Submitted by: Norm DePlume

One day I came home to find my brother home, but his car wasn’t outside. Asked him where he parked, and he said right in front of the door.

No car, looked up and down the street, but nothing, we went for a walk and one street there was his old Ford, with its nose on the sidewalk. We had to push it back to our parents’ house because the bike was still in my dad’s garage!

We thought someone had tried really hard to bump start the car, pushing it down the small hill until they discovered there was nothing in the car to start.

Still laugh about that.

Submitted by: Bruce Arnott

In the early 2000s, I lived with a friend in a residential neighborhood, left the city for a night to go fishing with another friend a few hours north. When I returned home the next day, I noticed the trunk of my 96′ Cavalier was open as we rounded the corner of my block. At the time I was big into car audio and had a speaker box with 2-10″ subs in the trunk with 2 amps and a crossover mounted on it. I looked in the trunk and found the speaker box, amps, crossover, over 100 CDs and the radio gone. I worked in the low voltage industry at the time and had all my tools in my trunk as well. Thieves used my tools to remove all the audio equipment and luckily left them in the trunk. I had them needed the tools for my job, I was glad they left them so I didn’t have to replace them that day to be able to work on Monday.

Submitted by: Phillip Nelson

Okay, so when I was 19 and starting college, my high school sweetheart and I were in different colleges. Things weren’t going so well and the writing on the wall was that the distance wasn’t working. She invited me to her university in the Bronx for a weekend. My car at the time was a 2000 Honda EX with a JDM B18C swap. Hot swap in 2008. After being there for a few hours and parking my car on the street next to the dorm, she dumped me. Heartbroken, I went home only to find that my car had been stolen in broad daylight. Heartbroken and sad after calling the police and having to wait a few hours for a friend to come get me, I had to go back and ask her if I could wait at her dorm until my ride got there.

Submitted by: 4RingKoning1234

This is at a dealer. We had a used Enclave on the lot, 8 or 9 years old, 150,000 km, nothing special, a basic driver. A man called from out of town and said he was interested and would send someone to inspect the vehicle. This is not unheard of. The “inspector” showed up the next day and seemed like a normal guy. First mistake: I didn’t ask for ID. He knew my name and the name of the “customer”. It was raining, so I made him wait in the service lane. He started looking at it, I was delivering another sold car so I left it to him. Second mistake.

I went to check on him and he and the car were gone. We hadn’t discussed a test drive, but I thought he did. Half an hour later he was still gone. I thought he had arrived in a big pickup and it wasn’t there either. I asked a service advisor and she said he looked at it for a moment and then drove away.

I called both him and the “customer” several times, obviously no answer. Called the police, they filed a report and that was the last we heard from that enclave. The names were fake, the phones were burners. They must have had a specific use for a mostly worn-out family car, and their elaborate plan gave them purpose.

Submitted by: mnmrosen

I sold Hummer H2s and H3s in 02-07, and we had a large inventory on the lot, parked in a row along a highway in the city. We noticed that sometimes vehicles were missing from the line. That’s why we started removing the main fuses from the fuse box of all our vehicles. As a salesman, I walked around with a pack of fuses that I had to reinstall when we showed or sold a car.

But the trucks kept disappearing.

We’re not talking twelve at a time, but one or two every few months. You took the keys out of the box, went looking for a truck, but it just wasn’t there.

After we started pulling the fuses it slowed down, but it didn’t stop. Then the dealership down the street was hit by more than 40 vehicles in one night; it was wild. Cars had all or part of their wheels removed, some cars lay on the asphalt, others with cinder blocks under the control arms, some with only one wheel gone, others with three. It’s clearly a case where the thieves knew they had a limited time to get out of there. That prompted local and state police to increase patrols. And yet, one by one, our trucks continued to go missing.

During that heightened surveillance, the police on our property kept encountering the same man, an employee who closed the door after his shift or hung around to chat and be friendly, and they started connecting the dots. He ultimately only pleaded guilty to the last thefts, two vehicles, but I assume he was involved in more.

He allegedly took $6,000 per vehicle.

Submitted by: potbellyjoe