The National Insurance Crime Bureau has recently released the “Hot Wheels” report for 2011. The Hot Wheels is a report that provides the list of the most stolen vehicle models in the US each year and the information provided by the list is based on the auto theft data that are submitted by the law enforcement agencies in the US to the National Crime Information Center or NCIC. The NCIC identifies all of the model, make and year of the vehicles that were reported stolen within the year and come up with the list of the most stolen vehicles.
Based on the current list, the 1994 Honda Accord was the identified as the most stolen vehicle model in the US for 2011. The 1998 Honda Civic claimed the second spot while the 2006 full-size pickup truck from Ford got the third spot.
Aside from the vehicles mentioned earlier, other models such as the 1991 Toyota Camry, 2000 Dodge Caravan, and the 1994 Acura Integra were also included in the list and each of these occupies the fourth, fifth, and sixth spots respectively.
By looking at the model years of the vehicles that occupied the list’s highest spot, it is quite obvious that a lot of car thefts have been stealing older vehicle models. In fact, the latest vehicle model that was included on the most stolen list was the 2004 Dodge Pickup.
Given this trend, a lot of car experts were quite convinced that car thefts are currently targeting some of the older car models since the security and safety systems of these cars are not so reliable compared to those that are used on the latest car models. In addition to that, stealing older car models will not expose these thieves to a lot of attention from the public since such vehicles are not as flashy as the latest models in the market.
Although the list that was released by the National Crime Insurance Bureau simply proves that car thieves are still operating within the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI was pleased to announce that the total number of car thefts that was reported in 2010 has decreased by about 3.3 percent in 2011. The agency has also stressed out that such statistics could as a great accomplishment since the number of vehicle thefts has never been this low in the past few decades especially since 1967.
