Top Ten Stolen Vehicles of 2008

All right you thieving little yobs. Just what have you been up to? Well, over the past year, people like the National Insurance Crime Bureau's, the NICB, keeps track of what hot (so to speak) in the world of car thievery. They figured out the vehicle make, model, and model year most reported stolen cars for 2008.

This is usually fun stuff to keep track of. It shows you what to worry about, for one thing. And it's also sort of a pointer of which cars are popular throughout their complete life cycle (if you consider theft to be part of that).

I remember one year there was an addendum that the number 1 stolen car in the U.S., the Mitsubishi Starion/ Dodge Conquest, was also the most recovered car of the year. All the cops could figure out that they were stolen solely for the purpose of joy rides, and then left, relatively untouched, to be returned to their rightful owners.

Anyway, here's the list:

1. 1994 Honda Accord

2. 1995 Honda Civic

3. 1989 Toyota Camry

4. 1997 Ford F-150 Pickup

5. 2004 Dodge Ram Pickup

6. 2000 Dodge Caravan

7. 1996 Jeep Cherokee/Grand Cherokee

8. 1994 Acura Integra

9. 1999 Ford Taurus

10. 2002 Ford Explorer

What you'll notice about the list, especially the top four, is that the parts used in Accords, Civics, Camrys and F-150s are common across a wide variety of platforms for manufacturers like Honda, Toyota and Ford. This points to chop-shop operations, where cars are stolen, broken down into their component parts, and the parts are sold for greater profit than if the car was kept whole.

Accords, Civics and also number 8 on the list, the Acura Integra, are big hits with the tuner crowd. For years, people were getting their seats, just the seats, stolen from their Honda Preludes because they were fashionable with the Fast & Furious crowd.

So I would also bet that a lot of those Accords, Civics and Integras are ending up, not as parts, but as the basis for, or parts in some sort of totally slammed boy racers import tuner dream car.

Not that there's anything wrong with the import tuner scene. It's not exactly my cup of tea, but I always figured, "Hey, at least they're into cars. Maybe some of them will end up liking Ferraris and road racing eventually."

The point being, know where those parts you're using are coming from, OK?

Source: AutoBlog. Photos from Flickr users stephenyeargin, steevithak, and RAVDesigns.