Ford top brand, California top state, for SUV thefts

What do car thieves like? Fords, when it comes to SUVs and CUVs.

The Ford Escape, Edge and Explorer have the honor of being named the most-stolen SUVs in America, according to a new study released by the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

And California is the state they are most likely to be stolen in.

By brand, the top five most stolen SUVs and CUVs were the Ford Escape, Ford Edge, Ford Explorer, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Kia Sorento.

The leading states were California, Florida, Michigan, Texas and New York.

But the places that had the highest rates per population were the New York metropolitan area, followed by the Detroit area and the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area. Almost twice as many vehicles were stolen in the New York area as the greater Los Angeles area.

A total of 21,711 SUV/CUVs, from model years 2011-13, were stolen during the reporting period of January 2010 to December 2013.

Compact CUVs, the smallest vehicles in the study, were the most-stolen class -- representing 73% of all the stolen units and almost twice as many thefts as large-sized SUVs.

The good news? More than 85% of the stolen vehicles were recovered. The rest, the study presumes, “may have been targeted by sophisticated organized theft rings which dismantle stolen vehicles
for parts, VIN switch them to resell to unsuspecting buyers, or export them to other countries.”

The most unrecovered class of SUV was the premium class. About a third of those stolen vehicles were never seen again.

Mercedes GLs and Land Rover Range Rovers topped that list.

In terms of all vehicles, an August 2013 report put the Honda Accord and Civic as the most-stolen vehicles in the U.S.