These Are Your Worst Car Theft Stories

It's easy to forget that car theft has been around for as long as there has been street parking. Transportation theft so ubiquitous in American culture that it predates both the modern automobile and the U.S. Constitution. Before cars, horses were a common target for thieves. In 18th-century Pennsylvania, horse thieves were branded as punishment. Repeat offenders were marked with the letters H and T on their foreheads. That's after getting tortured for over an hour while trapped in a pillory, but I digress.

We asked our readers last week for their worst car theft stories, and the responses were overwhelming. There were even a few comments that exceeded the character limit for a single message. However, you all were eager to share your heartbreak and tales of frustration. Thefts themselves ranged from elaborate multi-vehicle schemes to frantic crimes of opportunity. Without further ado, here are car theft stories that you'll never forget:

Month-long family vacation – first we went camping in New Hampsire and then we went north of the border to Montreal. Big caravan of 3-4 cars + a 1994 F150 with all of the camping gear, a lot of luggage, etc., acting as a tail vehicle. Camping was great, and so was the first week in Montreal, until we woke up one morning, looked outside the hotel, and noticed the F150, and everything in it, was missing. Cops were called, and they ended up finding the truck a few hours later, but everything was gone – thankfully, it was only the camping equipment and some random other things. I know how crazy it sounds to leave all of that stuff unsecured in the back of a truck, but it was the 90's, and it was Canada.

Submitted by: Michael Almeida

My car got stolen in college, I reported it to the cops, got a call a week later that it was in a tow yard waiting for me to pick it up. Apparently, the thieves eventually abandoned it when it ran out of gas.

Went to pick it up at the tow yard, had to pay $400+ to get it out, despite my reporting it stolen immediately after it was the week prior. They didn't even have it in that yard; they had moved it to the long-term lot, so I had to trek halfway across the city to even see it. I get there, it's trashed and won't even start. I couldn't afford to have it towed somewhere, let alone get it fixed. I was given the option for them to take it off my hands for like $200 or whatever, or I'd continue to pile up storage fees until I took it out myself. I really had no choice.

So, to sum up, in college, I essentially had the pleasure of paying $600+ for my car being stolen.

Submitted by: JayWantsACat

I was at an ex's work Christmas party, which was being held at a local restaurant in the evening. The parking for this restaurant was across the road in a dirt lot that had no street lights. About an hour into the party, a woman came running in saying someone had broken into everyone's car by smashing out their side windows. At the time, I was driving a 2009 Pontiac G8 GT that I had purchased a month earlier. Everyone ran out to check their cars, and out of everyone, mine was the only one that hadn't been broken into. I have no idea why they spared mine, either they figured it had an alarm or had good taste in vehicles. Who knows.

Submitted by: Nick B

I once had two cars stolen in the same night. My girlfriend was spending the night at the house with my brother and I. I had an MGB and she had an Austin-Healey Sprite. My brother came home late and asked why my MG was parked around the corner with the lights on. I looked out the window, and it was gone, and so was my girlfriend's Sprite. Walked to where my car was and found that it had been properly hotwired but just wouldn't start. Praise Lucas, God of Darkness! The thief (or thieves) had apparently gone back for my girlfriend's car instead. It was recovered a couple of days later, and when I popped the hood, I found the battery had been replaced with a much bigger battery from another car. The police officer told me they had a report of a battery being stolen out of a Buick not far from where it was recovered, but said, "just keep it."

Submitted by: Norm DePlume

Came home one day to find my brother home, but his car was not outside. Asked him where he parked, and he said right outside.

No car, looked up and down the street but nothing, we went for a walk and one street over there was his old Ford, nose in to the sidewalk. We had to push it back to our parents' place because the engine was still sitting in my Dad's garage!

We figured someone had tried really hard to bump start it, pushing it down the slight hill until they found out there was nothing in the car to start.

Still laugh about that one.

Submitted by: Bruce Arnott

Early 2000's living with a buddy in a residential neighborhood, left town for the night to go fishing with another buddy a couple of hours north. Returned home the next day to find the trunk of my 96' Cavalier open when we rounded the corner on my block. At that time, I was big into car audio and had a speaker box with 2-10" subs in the trunk with 2 amps and a crossover mounted to it. Looked in the trunk to find the speaker box, amps, crossover, 100+ CDs, and the radio gone. I was working in the low-voltage industry at that time and had all my tools in my trunk as well. Thieves used my tools to remove all the audio equipment and left them in the trunk, fortunately. I needed the tools for my job, I was happy they left them so I didn't have to replace them that day in order to work on Monday.

Submitted by: Philip Nelson

Ok, so when I was 19 and going to school, my high school sweetheart and I were in different Colleges. Things weren't going great and the writing was on the wall that the distance wasn't working. She invited me for the weekend to her college in the Bronx. My car at the time was a 2000 Honda EX with a JDM B18C swap. Hot swap in 2008. After a couple of hours there and my car parked on the street right next to the dorm she dumped me. Heartbroken, I went to go home only to have found out my car had been stolen in broad daylight. Heartbroken and sad after calling the cops and having to wait a few hours for a friend to come get me, I had to go back and ask her if I could wait in her dorm until my ride got there.

Submitted by: 4RingKing1234

This is at a dealership. We had a used Enclave on the lot, 8 or 9 years old, 150k miles, nothing special, a basic driver. A guy called from out of town, said he was interested and that he was sending someone to inspect the vehicle. This is not unheard of. The "inspector" showed up next day, seemed like a normal dude. First mistake: I did not ask for ID. He knew my name and the "customer's" name. It was pouring rain so I had it waiting in the service lane. He started looking at it, I was delivering another sold car so I left him to it. Second mistake.

Went to check on him and he and the car were gone. We hadn't discussed a test drive but I figured that's what he was doing. A half hour later, he was still gone. I had thought he had arrived in a big pickup and that wasn't there either. I asked a service advisor and she said he looked at it for a minute and then drove off.

I called both him and the "customer" multiple times, no answer of course. Called the police, they took a report and that was the last we heard of that Enclave. The names were fake, the phones were burners. They must have had a specific use for a mostly worn-out family hauler and their elaborate scheme netted them one.

Submitted by: mnmrosen

I sold Hummer H2s and H3s in 02-07, and we had a large inventory on the lot, parked in a row along a highway in town. We noticed vehicles would just be missing from the line sometimes. So we started to pull key fuses from the fuse box on all of our vehicles. As a salesperson, I would walk around with a pack of fuses to put back in place whenever we showed or sold a car.

But the trucks kept disappearing.

We're not talking about 12 at a time, but one or two every few months. You'd grab the keys from the box, go out to find a truck, and it just wouldn't be there.

After we started pulling the fuses, it slowed down, but it didn't stop. Then the dealership down the street got hit for wheels on over 40 vehicles in one night; it was wild. Cars had all or some of their wheels removed, some cars lying on the asphalt, others with cinder blocks under the control arms, some with only one wheel gone, others with three. Clearly, a case where the thieves knew they only had so much time to get out of there. That triggered the local and state police to increase patrols. And yet our trucks kept going missing one by one.

It was during that increased surveillance that the police kept running into the same guy at our lot, an employee who closed up or hung out after his shift to chat and be friendly, and they started to connect the dots. He eventually pleaded to only the last of the thefts, 2 vehicles, but I kind of assume he was involved in more.

He allegedly took $6k per vehicle.

Submitted by: potbellyjoe