OK, It’s that time of year where all the lazy journalist jump up and down about which vehicles are the “Top 10 Stolen Car List” according to AA Insurance claim statistics. Every year all the reports seem to overlook that the AA tends to attract customers who are more conservative in their choice of wheels, let alone mention that there are actually other insurance companies out there!
Easy to believe that more of these are stolen then a Subaru Legacy?
Here’s the AA list:
Top 10 Stolen Cars (AA Insurance claims data 1 May 2010 – 30 April 2014)
1. Honda Torneo
2. Subaru Impreza
3. Mazda Premacy
4. Mazda Familia
5. Subaru Forester
6. Mazda Atenza
7. Subaru Legacy
8. Mazda MPV
9. Nissan Sunny
10. Nissan Cefiro
My first thought when seeing the Mazda Premacy at number 3 on the list was “You’ve got to be shitting me!”
I then jumped on the NZ Police website which has a record of all reported vehicle thefts for the past 6 months and did some number crunching of my own.
Basically, I looked for every motor on the AA list then added the following 5 vehicles (all of which I felt would probably have a higher theft rate than the Mazda Premacy!)
Nissan Terrano, Nissan Skyline, Nissan Silvia, Mitsubishi Lancer and the trusty Toyota Hiace van (Figured a van should be allowed seeing that the Premacy was there!)
Admittedly it dawned on me that I’d missed a couple of obvious cars, such as the Honda Integra, but I have no intention of going back to the list as it really is tedious looking at an Excel spreadsheet! I’ve also included the numbers that I counted.
My selection from the NZ Police website (Last 6 months data)
1: Subaru Legacy 93
2: Subaru Impreza 77
3: Mazda Familia 44
4: Nissan Terrano 41
5: Mitsubishi Lancer 41
6: Toyota Hiace 41
7 Nissan Skyline 34
8: Honda Torneo (8) Honda Accord (23) Total 31
9: Subaru Forester 26
10: Nissan Cefiro 22
11: Nissan Silvia 17
12: Nissan Sunny 15
13: Mazda Atenza (Mazda 6 included) 8
14: Mazda MPV 8
15 Mazda Premacy 0
So (unless I’ve missed one which is quite likely) not one single Mazda Premacy has been reported stolen to the Police in the last 6 months! Please feel welcome to jump on the NZ Police website and double check.
So if you’re a hack who works for any of the following websites I suggest you get off fat arse and do some decent research before going to print next year.
stuff.co.nz
nzherald.co.nz
nbr.co.nz
3news.co.nz
voxy.co.nz
radionz.co.nz
newstalkzb.co.nz
nzcity.co.nz
scoop.co.nz
The level of journalism here really is appalling…
The thing that stands out having a look through the nationwide database of stolen “vehicles” is that more of 1/3 of them are trailers! Some other surprises I saw were 29 Isuzu Bighorns, 23 Nissan Bluebirds and 106 Toyota Hiluxes. Less surprising were 42 Honda Civics, 48 Holden Commodores and 45 Toyota Corollas.
I noticed the huge amount of trailers there, plenty of bikes and mopeds too.
Good work with counting the Hilux. That places it at #1 then!
The main thing as well is that AA doesn’t really insure Silvias, Skylines etc due to their underwriting guidelines – It’s AA’s own vehicles list, if you were to have NAC’s most stolen vehicles, you would find that it would be Lancers, WRX’s, Silvias etc.
That’s the whole point of the post Jayden. As I mentioned the most accurate way to get the statistics is via the NZ police website.
Simple sorting gave me this:
Audi 14
BMW 35
Cheverolet 3
Chrysler 5
Daewoo 3
Daihatsu 7
Dodge 1
Ford 122
Holden 97
Honda 217
Hyundai 12
Isuzu 30
Jaguar 3
Kia 4
Landrover 5
Lexus 1
Mazda 192
Mercedes Benz 13
Mitsubishi 171
Nissan 406
Opel 2
Peugot 6
Renault 2
Rover 5
Ssangyong 1
Subaru 198
Suzuki (cars) 23
Toyota 393
VW 14
Volvo 1
Trailers 2862!!
Guess thieves go for reliability lol
only 3 rx7s… why do I now feel like I’ve paid far too much over the years for insuring “high theft risk” vehicles?
I installed an alarm with GPS to a RX-7 last year and someone tried to break into it the next day! The owner ran down to the car when his phone rang and the scum bags legged it.
There are not a huge number of RX-7’s about so I’d guess that’s why.