Thefts of Kia and Hyundai cars have rocketed in North America over the past couple of years, in large part to TikTok how-to videos making it easy to part them from their owners. But neither of the Korean automakers’ cars feature in the UK car theft hall of shame, whose Top 10 league table contains six different Range Rover models.
A new study comparing the number of thefts of a particular model with the number of examples of those models registered for the road in the UK from Confused.com car insurance found that the Range Rover Velar R-Dynamic HSE D180 is Britain’s most stolen car.
Yep, a diesel SUV with just 178 hp (180 PS) is the poster child for car theft in the UK, presumably because the R-Dynamic model’s sporty interior and exterior trim translates into plenty of cash when the cars are parted out. Second place on the list goes to the Range Rover Sport HSE Dynamic Black P400, more of which were technically stolen, though because more are also licensed, its theft rate is fractionally lower than the Velar’s.
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Embarrassingly for Land Rover, and worryingly for Range Rover Sport owners, the Range Sport appears four times in the top 10 to the Velars’s two, but full-size Range Rover owners can sleep easy. The halo model doesn’t appear anywhere on the list.
But Land Rover isn’t the only luxury brand that will be wincing at the figures collated by insurance comparison site, Confused.com, because the Lexus RX appears in third and fourth spots. This leaves just two spaces for the Ford Fiesta Zetec S. The Red Edition and Black Edition are virtually neck and neck, but it seems thieves marginally prefer the red version, even if it means the getaway isn’t quite as stealthy.
Given the numbers in the table of stolen models, it’s no surprise that Land Rover easily wins the ‘most stolen make’ competition. Almost 1 percent of registered Land Rovers were stolen, compared to 0.3 percent for Mercedes, which placed second in the table, and 0.29 percent for Ford and BMW, who came third and fourth.