The Fight Against Crime: Notes From The Front : Older Cars Are a Steal in L.A. Area

We have lists of the 10 best dressed, the worst dressed, the richest, the winningest, the oldest, the quickest and the deadliest. There are lists of the top 10 TV shows, newest slang usages and most popular foods.

So it only makes sense, in an age where there’s a top 10 list for everything, to have one for car thieves.

Not for the wheel-snatchers themselves (rot their cruel hearts), but for their preferred prey: the cars most sought after by the slim-jim and chop-shop set.

And, of course, what the list says is that the Los Angeles area, including the San Fernando Valley, is different in this, as in so many other areas of life.

Angeleno thieves, it seems, have a greater penchant for foreign cars than do their counterparts in the rest of the country. The most stolen cars nationwide are all American made. In Los Angeles, four of the top 10 are Japanese.

Thieves here also go for older cars. Nationally, the 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme is the most stolen car; in Los Angeles, the number one choice is the 1979 Olds Cutlass, says Detective William Fulton of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Community Effort to Combat Auto Theft, or CECAT unit. That’s five years older than the oldest car on the national top 10 list of those most often stolen, according to CCC Information Services Inc. of Chicago. And, comparing CCC data with Fulton’s shows that the average stolen car here is 6.5 years older than the national average.

“The older ones are easy to get into, easy to steal and they’re popular among a large segment of this community,” Fulton explains, “including the car thieves.

“The popular cars are going to be the ones stolen. If two-thirds of the population of L.A. happens to like Toyotas, then that’s what is going to be stolen--either for resale or for stripping the parts or for shipping the vehicle out of the country.”

The three cars most stolen nationally are: the 1984 Cutlass Supreme, the 1986 Chevrolet Camaro (which does not show up on the top 10 list for Los Angeles--although they were a local product from the now-closed GM Van Nuys plant), and the 1986 Cutlass Supreme (another car that L.A. thieves like less than 10 others). Here, the favorites are: the 1979 Olds Cutlass, the 1980 Toyota Celica and the 1981 Olds Cutlass, Fulton said.

Overall, Fulton said, car thefts in the Valley make up slightly more than 30% of all those in the city. In 1993, there were 20,159 cars stolen in the Valley and 65,541 cars stolen in the city as a whole.

CECAT, Fulton’s unit, does its best with 12 officers. The unit recovers slightly less than 60% of the cars stolen, Fulton said. And if you add in recovered car parts, the number jumps to about 80%, Fulton said.

Because so many cars are stolen just for their parts, some of the most stolen cars are popular because of the interchangeability of their components with others cars, he said.

The actual business of stealing the cars is not very difficult, Fulton said. A good car thief can break into a car with a slim jim or other tools about as quickly as the owner could open the door with a key. The crudest way is often the quickest, Fulton said: Many thieves just break the window and unlock the door.

Thieves have also learned the different--and effective--ways to hot-wire both American and Japanese cars, Fulton said.

The bottom line, he said, is that if thieves really want your car, they’ll get it. But there are precautions that will discourage them.

“The first thing people can do is pay attention to where they park . . . the car to make it less accessible to the car thief,” Fulton said. “The second thing is an alarm system that cuts off the ignition system or fuel supply.”

But a better alarm system is no guarantee that a car will not be stolen, Fulton warned.

“Some of the new expensive cars have such good alarm systems that about the only way to get the car is to carjack it,” Fulton said. “That’s one of the reasons for an increase in carjackings.”

No word yet on the most carjacked car in Los Angeles, or what that might say about us.