#stolen

The stolen multi-generational single-family 1980 Toyota Celica Supra we reported on in May has been returned to its rightful owners.

Lois writes:

Hey! The car was recovered! In Eugene OR. Plates gone, ignition messed up, but otherwise in good condition!

“Let me show you how this works,” Danger Girl laughed, as we descended the stairs in the airport parking garage. I call her Danger Girl because

0. I keep putting her in danger, sometimes mortal;
1. She soloed in a Cessna before she turned seventeen;
2. She has certain other dangerous habits that, this being a different kind of publication than it was in days past, cannot be discussed in the full and frank fashion with which it was once my delight to oppress our more delicate readers.

She’d told me that we were renting a Camry. I was happy about this. I like renting Camrys. But as we walked towards a line of cars that clearly included Camrys, Danger Girl took a sharp right turn towards a black Challenger in what I was pretty sure was the rental return lane. “I can take any car I want,” she informed me, “so I’m going to take this one.” I loaded our luggage into the wide, flat, Seventies-style trunk as she fired up the Pentastar and adjusted the seat. “Off we go!” she laughed, and we drove up two levels of a circular ramp and out into the warm California night.

As we entered the freeway, something occurred to me.

“Hey… aren’t you supposed to, like, tell somebody you’re taking this car?”

This 1980 Toyota Celica Supra Mark 1 – previously featured as a Curbside Classic right here on TTAC – has been stolen in Eugene, Oregon.

Let’s help its rightful owners get it back.

Clueless about Keyless writes:

Dear Sajeev,

I recently bought a 2014 Acura TL and am having trouble coming to terms with keyless entry. It goes like this:

You get exactly 2 pre-programmed key fobs, labelled #1 and #2. You can never have more than two active key fobs. You can buy a third, but it once it is programmed to be fob #1 or fob #2, the original fob #1 or #2 will no longer work. There is no back up normal key that will start the car. You will either have one of these two fobs, or your car is a $30K brick.

Yesterday’s post on Texas Tailgate Theft definitely struck a nerve with this Native Texan, especially the NCIB’s Quote:

“Since a tailgate theft takes just seconds to accomplish, consumers might consider using an after-market security device, such as a hinge lock to thwart criminals.”

Yeah, not quite…

Prematurely pronounced dead, trucks are back in favor. They never went out of style with one eclectic clientele: Thieves. “Thieves continue to target large pickups and large SUVs at higher rates than other vehicles,” says the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) that keeps track of these things. “No. 1 on this year’s list, the four-wheel-drive F-250 crew cab, has a claim frequency of 7 per 1,000 insured vehicle years, or nearly 6 times the average for all vehicles.”

“How do I avoid car theft?”headlines a UK website. The felonious misappropriation of automobiles is a menace, and everybody has his or her solution. Police departments use bait cars . Murilee uses secret kill switches, fabricated from “a spring-type clothespin ziptied into the underdash wiring harness, with electrical contacts in the jaws.” And what do they recommend across the pond to thwart a thief? You either put a stuffed animals in your car. Or you buy a Ford Ka3.

The Ka3 is burglary-proof, says the site.

It looks like Gawker can find solace in the reassuring fact that they are not the only ones who ended up with a purloined database, containing the privates private details of all their customers. Intimate customer data of Honda has also been robbed and plundered. See, it happens to the best of them.