One of the favourite vehicles for professional car thieves to steal is the Land Rover Defender, writes former policeman and car crime specialist Dr Ken German.
Its big brothers, the Range Rover and the Discovery alongside the Audi S3, the E class Mercedes and the BMW 3&5 series still continue unabated in making media headlines as the main targets to ‘keyless’ thefts, all of which as you might expect are now written at the top of these organised thieves’ daily worksheets in indelible ink. The Defender however seems to have ducked under the radar somewhat and while five were being stolen every week 12 months ago, notwithstanding a small drop between April and May 2020, the figures again according to the police, insurance companies and social media sites like Landy Watch [a Facebook forum] with over 15,000 members, seem to suggest they have reached and even surpassed that figure and we are not yet halfway through the year.
The attraction is understandable as late models can realise £50,000 whilst a ten year old Defender 110 with more than 100,000 miles on the clock can still realise nearly £20,000 and a low mileage, series 1 model in good condition can sell for more than £30,000. Unfortunately, of those stolen within the past 12 months, only 28 per cent were recovered, the majority of which were not fit enough to be returned to their owners due to being stripped, burnt or written off.
The figures do not include those that were stripped of parts such as wheels, bonnets, wings and seats whilst the car was still in situ. Sadly these are not classified as stolen if the chassis remains. If they were the total of Defenders affected by theft would be even more worrying. One police officer attending the skeleton of a car left on a victim’s driveway suggested the thieves had stripped it completely in what the owner suggested was minutes. His thoughts were that the speed of the thieves could successfully have challenged a crack Army team at a Royal Tattoo in timing the stripping and rebuilding of a Defender.
Last year in Cheshire the police asked genuine Defender owners to place a ‘Police Stop Me’ signs in their rear window ,just in case theirs had been stolen. Two months ago nine men were arrested for stealing and stripping 70 cars many of which were from the Land Rover range including several Defenders.
Many of the UK’s constabularies appear to have gained a new momentum when it comes to vehicle crime. Once thought of as a low priority, several forces hard hit by statistics have re-created their own stolen vehicle units, staffed by multi-talented officers with a mechanical knowledge, who are IT literate, can research and organise raids, identify cloned vehicles, photograph evidence and forensically treat stolen items, interview suspects and see a case through to a court hearing. This has brought rich pickings for some units with many ‘chop shops’ [sites where thieves cut up stolen vehicles for their valuable parts] being discovered and active thieves arrested and dealt with.
Two of them, the West Midlands and Essex forces, have realised the extent of car crime in their areas and suggest being ultra-proactive means the more they look the more they find! Main insurance companies like the NFU have also recognised for some time the rise in Defender theft suggesting that more than 500 of them were stolen from farms alone across the UK last year, a number they suggest will continue to increase annually if owners do not consider more security.
In the north-east of England, thefts have rocketed by 69 per cent and victims’ claims have increased by over £2 million in just three years. Five years ago, 530 Defenders were reported stolen in West Yorkshire alone. Rebecca Davidson, NFU Mutual rural Affairs Specialist stated that organised criminals appear to be scouring rural and out of the way farmyards and country properties to spot examples they can steal.
These once havens are included in the data supplied by the Department for Transport that suggests 44 percent of incidents where thieves had gained entry to a car were because the door was unlocked. The National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NAVCIS) confirms the cars continued top placing in vehicles targeted by thieves but suggest that while organised criminal gangs are increasingly using sophisticated electronic tools to bypass vehicle security systems many Defender models can be entered and started with ‘any old key’.
In this respect even the old and popular method the thieves had of fishing for car keys through the letterbox seems rather pointless! The conundrum faced by the police, insurance companies and victims today is that this highly desirable car remains one of the most easy to steal.
It is five years now since production of the Defender ceased production in Solihull and much of the increase in thefts is recognised by the factory at being with their earlier models and their lack of many of the security devices you would normally find on any other road-going vehicle.
Land Rover agree that security on these were pretty poor but with today’s secondary security items the problem is fairly easy to get round. Their suggestion is to add layers of security and not to expect the factory-fit kit to protect the vehicle at all times. All security products individually will be vulnerable in one way or another, so the more added the more difficult the car would be to steal.
Their own comprehensive list of security items was created in conjunction with the police and insurance companies and includes anti- theft door and bonnet hinges, battery isolator switches, cable guards, rear door and window security mesh, steering wheel locks and security nuts, internal strong boxes, alarms and OBD security and remote smartphone tracking and identity systems.
While today’s police officers rely heavily on Automatic Number Plate Readers to spot stolen cars, it’s the tracking devices that allow them to place cars at a particular location and it’s the covert identity systems that offer up a cars true provenance. This is most useful if only the component parts of a stolen car have been found.
The Defender of any year joins the few cars that can be sold in any guise, left or right hand drive and in any configuration anywhere, and unfortunately it makes them a prime target for thieves.
It may be true that many are stolen to order and are trafficked whole or in parts to other countries by eastern European gangs ending up far afield as Africa, the Middle East or China where the new middle class is trying to abandon Communism and trying the visible trappings of material wealth. The problem with car theft however lies here in the UK in tackling our own 5500 criminal gangs controlling 37,000 members (according to the National Crime Agency), the majority of which use car crime to support their other activities.
This timely police initiative has clearly reduced vehicle crime, albeit 113,000 vehicles at the last count is still too many stolen.
About the author
Dr Ken German is a former detective and Head of Technology at the Met Police’s stolen car squad. His PhD is about international vehicle crime. He’s a past president of the UK branch of the International Association of Auto Theft Investigators (IAATI).
