Smug with the knowledge that few people know that a Subaru Liberty (Legacy) RS is turbocharged and all-wheel-drive (and certainly wouldn't be bothered with stealing what looks like a dull, sedate family car wearing comfortable shoes), I gave up the idea of buying a bomb to get to and from the railway station. Such cars are often a pain to keep going anyway, and the thought of double the registration costs every year really turned me off; not to mention how long it takes old heaters to warm up in winter ...
But after an unusually long Friday at work and a slow trip on the train, the walk back to my car from the station revealed an empty parking spot. No car. No hint of a car. The usual flash of "Oh, where did I park then?" popped up, but I knew I'd parked exactly there 'cos I remembered turning on the alarm that very morning.
So the car was gone. And not just any car, the Pride and Joy. A strange mixture of surprise, loss and anger hit me; somebody had dared to nick my favourite toy, the companion with which I'd had so much fun and on which I'd lavished so much attention. Gone. And probably broken.
It turns out that the woman living in the closest house had seen "two men in a white car" jump-starting my baby. With the alarm going off. But she hadn't taken any more notice of them than that. My next thought was that they'd obviously wanted my car in particular, because they'd done it in broad daylight - circumventing the alarm and steering lock - even though there were more expensive cars parked nearby. Maybe it was a way of compensating for her disappearance - thinking that somebody had really wanted her?
A week later, I've got over my feeling of woe to a degree; the insurance should cover me for a replacement. But more importantly, since then the car has been recovered. It was apparently used in a robbery, but it looks as though it was dumped and then looted and pillaged by the local wildlife ... nothing in the car that wasn't bolted down is still there, and they took a few things that were.
After a few days in the police impound yard for fingerprinting, it was dragged onto a flatbed truck and carried to a trusted panelbeater. Scratched, dented, broken and leaking vital fluids. I'm still waiting for the word from the insurance company, but at the moment she's on life support. She would be better off if left to die a graceful, natural death rather than limping around for the rest of her ultimately shortened life. Cars are definitely never the same once they're bent ...
Now I've got over it a little, the topic of car security is something that's on my mind. That we have to protect anything so carefully at all in our society is a repugnant fact, yet my last two cars have been broken into four times (and now this one's been stolen) all in the last four years. And I don't park anywhere particularly seedy. But I suppose there will always be the scum element that can't be bothered getting a job and instead prey on people who do.
And at least - except for the ICE - my car had come straight from the factory. Anyone with a modified car is in a much worse situation, what with all the time they've spent making one-off changes that might not be reproducible. No insurance can cover you for that. And even if I see the car again, I can never be sure that something isn't about to break due to the punishing it's copped - I have my doubts that the thieves would carefully have let the car idle for a while after driving it hard ...
So what are the ways you can protect your favourite transport? It starts with a simple wheel lock, but there aren't many on the market that will deter a dedicated thief: they'll replace the wheel, use a hacksaw, or even just break the lock. Next up there are the ignition and fuel cut-outs, but like a full alarm there always seems to be ways around them. Even the rolling alarms, where the code changes every time you use the remote control, can be circumvented. The type of system pioneered here by Holden (where the key holds the code that allows the engine to start) has been sussed-out by the scumsuckers.
Which seems to leave me with the option of a tracking system, where the police can track the car via the mobile phone network. And it sure sounds like a good idea at the moment. I've spoken to someone with the same model car as mine, and when his car was stolen the cops just caught up with the thieves, waited until the car was on a straight piece of road - and remotely turned the car off! It was undamaged except for various locks, and two thieves were caught red-handed.
Still, for roughly a thousand bucks to fit and two hundred per year for monitoring (on top of insurance costs) it may be the best protection short of a Rottweiler.....even though it's expensive.
But I still get the shits with having to go to all this trouble just to have a car which is a little nice to drive and is maybe a little better than the average shopping trolley. I really can't justify the expense of owning two cars, and I don't see why I should have to. The problem is that, like all social problems, it's damned hard to come up with a decent solution. Wouldn't it be nice if all the criminals suddenly dropped dead and the police were busy just getting cats out of trees?
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