If you see this car on Craigslist for $10k, it’s stolen. Photo: BMW
If you live in or visit the Newark, NJ area long enough, sooner or later your car will be stolen. At the very least, it will be broken into, as I learned the hard way when I parked a new BMW 325Ci at Newark Airport. I was gone for ten minutes, which was long enough for some asshole with a slide hammer to punch my door lock and break into my car looking for the valet key. They didn’t find it, of course, but they managed to do $800 worth of damage to the driver’s door in about 15 seconds. I won’t give you detail on the internet, but let’s just say that BMW’s are REAL easy to break into and their factory alarms are as useless as rear wings on FWD street cars.
BMW also learned this lesson, when six new cars imported for the New York Auto Show “disappeared” from the Port of Newark. Ironically, the thefts occurred in three separate incidents, with the first theft occurring three weeks before the show. A partial list of the missing includes two five series (a 535 xDrive and a 550i in a special paint called Sophisto Gray), a 650i and a 750iL. Details on the other models “liberated” from Port Newark weren’t released.
Let’s be careful out there, and if you need to visit Newark for any reason (although I can’t think of a good one), be sure to lock your doors, use The Club, pull your plug wires, take your wheels with you and chain your car to something solid. This will probably reduce your chance of theft by at least 10%.
Reference: Grand Theft Auto at the 2010 NYIAS