Thieves really like to get their hands on the 1994 Honda Accord. For the fourth consecutive year in 2011, this vehicle has been the most frequently stolen car in the U.S. Aside from being popular, this model doesn’t have many security features. The National Insurance Crime Bureau said that thieves took 7,596 Accords from the 1994 model year last year. The trade group also divulged that the second most-stolen car is the 1998 Honda Civic. This is the seventh year in a row that Honda had the top two spots. Joe Brosius, the heads the International Association of Auto Theft Investigators, said that the older cars are being stolen because they don’t have the safety features used in the newer cars.
Brosius said that the newer models are difficult to hot-wire since they come with a feature that prevents the cars from being started when there’s no wire. Honda spokesman Chris Martin said that this technology, dubbed the immobilizer system, was added to cars in 1997 and 1998. He said that thieves would need to be quite sophisticated to get around the technology barrier.
The third most stolen is Ford Motor Co. full-size pickups from the 2006 model year. This marks the first time that a truck was named in the top three in data gathered by a group that started in 2000. Bureau spokesman Frank Scafid said that this is particularly because NICB had more models in the category. In the past 30 years, the top-selling lineup, which includes Ford's F- Series, the F-150 and F-250 pickups, has been the best-selling line of vehicles in the U.S.
