These are Canada’s 10 most stolen cars last year

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Buckle up. It’s time to find out if you’re the next contestant on Someone’s About to Steal Your Car.

Because statistics are fun, malleable things, it’s important to parse out some important numbers and trends that might otherwise get buried in the excitement. The Équité Association, a national non-profit organization, helps insurers fight theft and fraud using advanced analytics and investigative services coordinated with global law enforcement and industry organizations.

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The Honda CR-V (from the 2016 to 2021 model years) tops this year’s list of preferred stolen rides in Canada; that’s the same model as last year. But to truly evaluate the actual risk of losing your vehicle, you have to do a little math. Équité helpfully collapsed the model years in this year’s list (they’re usually broken out so one model, across its years, fills the top 10) to give a clearer snapshot, and also figured out the ratio of thefts to registrations. Your CR-V may be the most-coveted based on the numbers stolen (4,117) but out of 236,555 currently insured and on the road, that’s just 1.7 per cent.

A more important story is the second-ranked vehicle: the Lexus RX series (2016 to 2021 model years, too) saw half as many units stolen, 2,202, but that’s out of 34,560 on the road. That means 6.4 per cent of these Lexuses were stolen. In Ontario alone, that number is 9.4 per cent. That’s insane.

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For perspective, after the Lexus and the Honda CR-V’s 6.4 and 1.7 per cent, respectively, for the year 2021, the next highest stolen-to-registered ratio is 1.3 per cent for the Honda Accord of model years 2018 through 2021; 1.2 per cent for the Toyota Highlander, 2013 to 2019; and 1.2 per cent for the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra 1500 of 1999 to 2006.

After that, it gets even more fractional: Ford F-150s from 2015 to 2020 saw theft rates of 0.4 per cent; Jeep Grand Cherokees from 2011 to 2020 were the same; Honda Civics from 2016 to 2021 were at 0.3 per cent; Ram 1500s from 2011 to 2018, 0.2 per cent; and finally Toyota RAV4s from 2013 to 2018 at 0.2 per cent as well. 

As recently as 2019, the top tier of these stolen car lists was always overrun with older pickup trucks – especially 2002s, 2003s, and 2004s – since these were all easy pickings for thieves needing to move quickly and not wanting to circumvent modern anti-theft deterrents. But according to Bryan Gast, Vice President of Investigative Services for Équité, the shift in both what is stolen and why it was stolen is rapidly changing. 

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“Especially in Ontario and Quebec, vehicles are now being targeted for theft and export. Higher-value and later-model vehicles are filling international demand,” he says. Working with Interpol, law enforcement is now looking for your high-end SUV not around the corner, but around the world. “We’re developing a transnational strategy to track the theft and export of high-value vehicles,” says Gast. It’s organized crime at play, not so much joyriding teenagers. 

“In Alberta,” says Gast, “it’s a different market. That list is crammed with the pickups that also fill that province.” He notes that while vehicles are still frequently stolen in order to facilitate the commission of other crimes (people still need a big pickup when they attempt to tear an ATM from its mooring) Canada is rapidly becoming a source country for exporting “a tremendous amount of stolen vehicles. They’re being used as crime platforms — car bombs, trafficking, terrorism, and drug smuggling.” 

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What’s also changed is recovery rates. On older cars (2000 to 2007 models), recovery rates hover near 80 per cent; the recovery average for the newer, high-end models? Not even 20 per cent. And, keep in mind, that is on vehicles that are far more expensive than those being stolen years ago. Your 2021 Range Rover has just a 15-per-cent chance of being recovered.

The cost to the insurance industry – and those of us who buy insurance – is staggering. And one of the biggest boons to customer convenience, the remote key fob, has proven to be a huge Achilles’ heel for car owners.

All those remote entry systems that manufacturers are so enthralled with mean there is little stopping someone from grabbing your newer vehicle in an instant. Using a relay to boost the signal between your key fob and your car seems almost quaint, though it’s still an easy way for thieves to make off with your spanky new SUV while the key fob remains safe inside your home.

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That onboard diagnostics port that makes it so easy for your mechanic to diagnose what’s wrong is also the fastest way for someone stealing your car to instantly re-code it and make new fobs. Your fob is rendered useless in the blink of an eye. Gast warns of growing activity in VIN cloning: a stolen car gets a new vehicle identification number (VIN) that will run clean when checked, and even identifies it as the same make, model, and colour as yours. If you end up buying one of these re-VIN’d stolen cars from a “curbside” dealer, you’re out of luck. In Ontario, a registered dealer will protect you through OMVIC. It’s a real problem in Ontario, with the GTA being the primary bucket for losses.

But! There is a huge shift buried in the data this year. For several years, we’ve watched the Lexus RX draw thieves for its being particularly vulnerable. Breaking down those numbers a little shows that 2020 RXs see an 11 per cent disappearance rate (stolen-versus-insured again); the 2019s, 12 per cent. Nothing else comes close to these numbers — except the 2018s, at 8 per cent. 

Look at the numbers a different way, though, and you’ll see evidence Lexus is finally taking its weak spot seriously. The newer 2021 RX SUVs register in at a 1 per cent, uh, take rate. The model’s gone from having the highest overall chance owning one will mean it will be stolen; down to a one-per-cent chance. It’s proof that manufacturers can do something to prevent thefts. As Gast says, maybe this is one list they don’t want to see themselves at the top of.