Old and low insured value cars are more prone to theft than others

According to the data for claims released by RACV Insurance, most of car thieves in Victoria are targeting cars which are insured for small amounts and those which are almost a decade old. Cars that were more than nine years old were the favourites of thieves, as they accounted for about 73 percent of car theft claims. Cars having less than $6000 insurance value accounted for more than half the claims filed with RACV. Vehicles that were less than three years old accounted for only 4.5 percent of the theft claims with the company.

Car owners are quite careful if they are driving a new car, but they become less careful when they have an older model and they think that probably the new model of the car parked next to theirs will be the easier target for theft than their car, apparently because of the high value of the new ones. But they forget that those new models would be having all kinds of anti-theft devices installed in their cars and thieves would not like taking a risk with those models.

So if you are driving an older model, you have all the more reason to be more vigilant than others when you are parking your car at train stations, shopping malls or even outside your home. Some of the older models, such as Toyota Camry, Ford Falcon and Holden Commodores were most likely target for these thieves, though a part of the reason for high theft rate of these cars is also because there are more cars of these models on the road than other models.

One of the reasons why older cars are more prone to theft is that newer cars these days are equipped with various kinds of anti-theft devices, which are most likely not installed in older cars. They were either not installed in the first place or they went out of order and then were not replaced by the owner because of high cost involved. It is also mandatory since 2001 that all the new cars have an engine immobilizers installed in them.

However, this is not the only reason why older cars are the prime target for theft. Many cars that were hot sellers when they were launched a few years ago are also soft targets for thieves because many of these old model cars in the market needed replacement parts. Parts such as catalytic converters and various engine parts of these older models are in high demand in the market and this demand drives theft of these cars so that reselling these components in the market can fetch them good price.