Car thefts in Italy
Car thefts are a social scourge and over the years we have tried to develop increasingly advanced monitoring systems in order to keep track of how many cars are stolen, where and for what reason; one of the companies specializing in this area is LoJack, an American company that currently has about 400,000 tracking devices connected to cars circulating in Italy.
The LoJack observatory has just published the data for 2022, data from which very evident trends emerge and which in some way are a consequence of market preferences: think that in just 3 years the percentage of stolen SUVs or crossovers has increased from 33 to 47%, which means that today one car out of 2 that is stolen is an SUV or a crossover – considering how many of them are sold, the news does not surprise us at all.
A very particular fact that concerns our country is related to the geographical origin of the thefts : 90% of car thefts are spread over just 5 regions, so if you live in one of the remaining 15 the risk of your car being stolen is considerably lower. In first place in this ranking we have Campania, with 33% of car thefts, followed by Lazio with 24%, Puglia with 21% and Lombardy with 12%, while Sicily brings up the rear with 2%.
But thefts are not all the same and depending on where the theft takes place, the car could have different fates: in Campania, according to LoJack's research, the "return horse" method is used, i.e. stealing a car to ask for a ransom to the owner; in Puglia, on the other hand, stolen cars are stripped of all their parts in a few hours, to be resold on the spare parts market – usually in about 12 hours the car is reduced to just the bodywork. Rome and Milan, on the other hand, are distinguished by a high rate of thefts of SUVs that are "burglarized" with technologically advanced systems, without even having to break a lock.
Finally, the most coveted models, which once again follow the market trends: in Italy the Fiat Panda has been the best-selling car for several years, so it's no surprise that it's also the most stolen car. In second place we find Toyota RAV4, followed by Fiat 500 and Fiat 500X, with the Top 5 most stolen cars being closed by Jeep Compass.
Finally, LoJack reports a worrying trend: car thefts are increasing hybrid and electric cars that are disassembled to extract the battery pack – the most expensive element of the whole car – in order to resell it on the black market.