- The Land Cruiser has been named the most-stolen vehicle in Japan.
- The rugged SUV topped the list for the fourth consecutive year in 2024.
- Toyota and Lexus models occupied every single spot in the top 10.
Toyota is used to scoring plenty of places in vehicle league tables, whether it’s outright sales, reliability or the number of years a model will survive before succumbing to the crusher. And this week the automaker so comprehensively dominated a table, it took every single one of the 10 spots. But on this occasion Toyota won’t be celebrating, because the list is of the most-stolen vehicles in Japan.
The Japan General Insurance Association has been collating data on the car thefts every year since 2000 and between them, Toyota and Lexus locked out the first 10 places in the 2024 study. But there’s one model the thieves really can’t get enough of.
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That model is the Land Cruiser (and Prado), which topped the chart for the fourth year running, though incidences of theft jumped significantly in the 12 months to the end of December. While Land Cruisers accounted for 14.7 out of every 100 stolen vehicles in the 2023 table, the figure jumped to 27.5 in 2024. That meant more than one in every four cars stolen was a Land Cruiser.
The first four vehicles on the list maintained their position from the previous study. After the Land Cruiser came the Alphard minivan, the Prius and the Lexus LX (a posh Land Cruiser), all accounting for much smaller proportions of vehicle theft than the big Toyota SUV.
Another Lexus, the RX, occupied fifth spot, followed by the Toyota Crown, the Hiace and Velfire minivans, the Lexus LS sedan and the Toyota Voxy minivan. But the number of theft cases at this end of the table looks minuscule next to those at the top. Almost 670 Land Cruisers were stolen (compared to 383 in 2023) versus only 21 Voxys. The Land Cruiser theft epidemic helped increase the total number of vehicle thefts to 2,499.
Average insurer payouts also increased by about 20 percent to ¥2,815,000 ($18,700), having stayed fairly level between 2022 and 2023. And the place you’re most likely to get a car stolen? That would be the Aichi Prefecture, which accounted for more than a fifth of all thefts and is definitely not the best location for anyone thinking of getting a Land Cruiser.