The Auto Security Industry
More and more California drivers are coming back to empty parking places. After stabilizing in the first half of the 1980s, car thefts jumped sharply last year in Los Angeles County and across the state. From 1977 to 1986, auto thefts were up 25.2% nationwide, up 45.9% in California and up 62.0% in Los Angeles.
“We’re a very mobile society, and everybody has cars. . . . Maybe it’s an attitude that people have that (auto theft) is a victimless crime because we’re all covered by insurance,” said Sgt. Jerry Lay in the vehicle theft section of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office. Felony prosecutions and convictions of car thieves are seldom obtained, he added. The most popular, if unlikely, object of larcenous attention in October was the ’87 Hyundai Excel, ten of which were reported as stolen in Los Angeles.
Stealing cars is very much an urban industry. According to the Western Insurance Information Service, Los Angeles accounted for 49.8% of California’s total last year, while in Sierra, a Northern California county with a population of 3,420 and consisting mostly of the Tahoe National Forest, just one car disappeared all last year.
That may be an underestimate--as many as half a dozen cars were stolen in 1986, Sierra County Undersheriff Dave Marshall said. But he allowed that car alarms still do not sell well in the county. “The majority, including myself, don’t lock their cars. . . . I’ve lived here all my life, and it’s just not a habit I ever got into.”
Etching a vehicle identification number on a car’s windows, body panels and fenders can be cheaper than installing an alarm and may even do more to discourage a professional thief. An Irvine company, Security Etch International, is supplying the stencil-making equipment and etching chemicals, which General Motors has sold to some of its 10,000 dealers since June.
Mechanics using the $30 etching kits take less than 30 minutes to prepare the stencil and burn the 3 1/2-inch-long, -inch-high ID number onto 10 to 15 parts of a car, Security Etch Vice President David E. Jack said. GM’s suggested retail price for the service is $150.
The markings are difficult to efface and reduce the value of car parts to professional auto thieves, who usually dismantle a car and sell it in otherwise unidentifiable pieces. “Cars aren’t just being driven and dumped by joy riders. They’re being stolen for the parts,” said Sgt. Lay.
Jack declined to discuss Security Etch’s sales or estimate the value of the GM deal but said that about 200,000 cars have been etched with his company’s equipment since it went on sale in late 1984.
The etching business still faces a very basic problem, Jack admits. “When people think of vehicle security they think of something that will yell and scream and lock all the doors.”
Even as Southern Californians make their cars into strongboxes, they are also putting strongboxes in their cars.
A Long Beach company, Bon-Air Industries, will start marketing in January an eight-pound vault for installation under a car seat or in the trunk. Made of 3/8-inch steel, the boxes open at the front, measure 9 1/2 inches square and are 3 1/2 inches high. They will retail for $45 to $65 and require only a drill and a crescent wrench to install.
John Martin, owner of a Long Beach car stereo store, designed the product to satisfy complaints from customers. “We had so many people coming back that had bought removable radios and were losing (them,)” he said.
A trial run of 1,000 vaults sold out in two months last summer, Martin said. He decided to sell the idea to Bon-Air because the 40-year-old maker of auto accessories already had manufacturing facilities and a national distribution network.
Bon-Air hopes to sell several thousand vaults a month through catalogues and retailers of auto parts, Executive Vice President Robert L. Bonzer said.
The Auto Vault will give direct competition to Perma-Vault strongboxes, manufactured since 1979 by BonaFide Factory Products of Huntingdon Valley, Penn. Perma-Vaults are sold in two sizes, both 6 inches square at the base and either 7 1/2 or 11 1/2 inches high, President Marvin Sobel said. The smaller size retails for $125 and the larger for $130.
The current models are aimed at drivers seeking to protect their credit cards and cameras while traveling in dangerous urban areas. “There’s a lot less chance of my car being stolen than my being mugged,” said Sobel, whose work often takes him into Philadelphia.
Both models open at the top and can be mounted only in a trunk. Neither size will hold a removable radio, but the company plans to introduce such a model imminently, Sobel added.
