Skip to footer

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.

|
Yuriko Nakao/Reuters/File
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.
  • By Suzanne Kane Guest blogger

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.

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.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Most stolen car of 2012? The 'winner' is...
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2012/0822/Most-stolen-car-of-2012-The-winner-is
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe