The National Insurance Crime Bureau's Hot Wheels list compiles stolen vehicle data from law enforcement to determine which vehicles are most coveted by crooks.
WASHINGTON — The 1996 Honda Accord and the 1998 Honda Civic were the two most-stolen cars in the U.S. last year.
Almost 102,000 of one or the other of those cars were taken by car thieves in 2015.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau’s Hot Wheels list includes mostly older model cars, but does include some later-model vehicles. And a separate list of most-stolen brand-new cars in 2015 shows more than 7,600 brand-new vehicles were stolen last year.
“While older vehicles still dominate our Hot Wheels most-stolen list, the number of late model vehicles with anti-theft protection on the list goes to show that technology isn’t foolproof,” said NICB president and CEO Joe Wehrle.
“Criminals are doing their best to defeat anti-theft technology through hacking and other means, while at the same time manufacturers and others are working to improve security.”
The National Insurance Crime Bureau examines vehicle theft data submitted by law enforcement to the National Crime Information Center to determine the most stolen vehicles.
Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.
