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Keyless Entry Theft

GeeJayW said:
My first car was an Austin A40. That had the option for crankhandle starting. Used it in the winter months too. Much more reliable starting than cranking a stone cold engine using the key and expecting to get a decent spark from whatever is left of the battery power.
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Yep , although there's never been a time in my life when I've not had at least one Mercedes , I've had a good many other cars alongside , including some classic British cars - although wanting in some respects to the German competition , they did have their charm and their virtues .

In some cases they were just cheap and filled a need at the time .
 
Cars from the 1950's had the key number stamped on the ignition switch and you could buy the keys from a petrol station ! Different times then !
Why is the C class so popular with professional car thief's it's not so much the likes of a C63 I can get that but the likes of the C200/220?
 
Keyless go theft is very common unfortunately.

Just a few weeks ago my brother had his brand new BMW 7 series stolen. He had only had it for about 3 days and it had less than 200 miles on the clock. Like your experience with Mercedes, BMW were really unhelpful to him too. The car has not been recovered.

They have CCTV and you could clearly see two people arrive with some kit to boost the keyless fob signal, open the car and drive away.

This shows how easy it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AHSDy6AiV0

At the end of the day if the thieves are determined they will always find a way. However, as others have said if you have keyless entry and it isn't disabled buy yourself an RFID pouch for your keys (that's what the police recommended to him!).
 
Delayed Steve said:
Cars from the 1950's had the key number stamped on the ignition switch and you could buy the keys from a petrol station ! Different times then !
Why is the C class so popular with professional car thief's it's not so much the likes of a C63 I can get that but the likes of the C200/220?
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Wilmott Breeden FS keys you could certainly buy off little hooks in the petrol station , and it was not uncommon for people in the trade to have lengths of string , or wire , with a range of keys in numerical order - these keys were so poor though that anything roughly the right shape would turn the locks . Sometimes the wrong people would have these large bunches of keys , and so did most police stations .

The much better engineered keys fitted to German cars were a lot more secure and could only be officially obtained from the dealers , although back in the day ordering them was just a matter of going to the parts desk and asking , either with the key number or your chassis number - no need to produce any ID or proof of ownership .

Of course , if you had a key , you could get your locksmith to cut a copy , provided they had a blank , which prior to the 1970's was often not readily available for most German cars .

Base model Mercedes have always had a ready market in third world countries , where there is little interest in the more upmarket ones . I also suspect that interest in later models will wane because they are not bullet proof like earlier models , nor can they be worked on by bush mechanics with little more than a set of spanners .
 
A-AvantGarde said:
They have CCTV and you could clearly see two people arrive with some kit to boost the keyless fob signal, open the car and drive away.

(...)

At the end of the day if the thieves are determined they will always find a way. However, as others have said if you have keyless entry and it isn't disabled buy yourself an RFID pouch for your keys (that's what the police recommended to him!).
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That's why I don't see a point in having CCTV, it's not going to stop anyone. Pouch is cheaper and more effective. Even aluminium foil and keeping the key in the box, but it's not very practical.
 
Back in the day:

A brand spanking new (well, one day old) Toyota Celica GT4 Turbo in Black. One of 500 Homolgation Cars sold and it was mine.

I parked it up in Soho Square on a Friday Lunchtime and went off to a meeting for three hours.

I returned from my meeting to discover.

The car was still there (good) with both front windows fully down!
My wallet sat on the passenger seat. Clearly in view to any passerby.
The keys...... Wait for it................... Still hanging in the ignition.

My good friend in the Met Police told me that the average tea leaf, would have seen it as a "bait car" and left it well alone.

Maybe this is the solution. Leave your car unlocked with the windows down and the keys in the ignition.

I also (in my yoof) had a succession of Fords and Vauxhalls that could be opened and started using almost anything that resembled a key or a screwdriver blade. That was simply the norm. No idea what theft rates were like then, I never had one pinched and gave up locking them as it seemed pointless.
 
190 said:
Some information a few years old which suggests 25% Could be more by now
as keyless technology has become more widespread.

A simple search on " keyles car thefts" will produce any number of anecdotal news stories which would imply that it has become common.

https://www.met.police.uk/globalass...in-the-mps-area-between-2014---september-2015
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Must surely also be a correlation to the number of Keyless cars available for theft? Ergo if all cars were Keyless, all stolen cars would be Keyless.

There is also likely to be a correlation with the desirability of particular cars and the proportion of those that are Keyless.

Without the keys, or a virtual key, modern cars are difficult to steal. However being able to capture and amplify the Keyless Go signal is a weakness that is seemingly not difficult to exploit, giving suitably equipped thieves a virtual key to your car.

One way around this would be to have a biometric sensor system in the car or something similar to the Ghost system which could be part of the main ECU. These could/should be integrated by the OEM, though each has certain drawbacks. For example, what happens when the car goes in for servicing?

In the meantime, an RFI pouch and/or disabling the key seem to be the most cost effective solution.
 
Auto Ghost has a separate valet/service PIN, automatically cancelled once the driver PIN is used again (if I it understand correctly)
 
Seem to remember Hiring a Lincoln Town Car in the states a while back which had a keypad on the door and you had to enter a PIN to access. Always thought that a good idea. Never really understood the attraction of KG - just becoming more lazy?
 
Greek God said:
Seem to remember Hiring a Lincoln Town Car in the states a while back which had a keypad on the door and you had to enter a PIN to access. Always thought that a good idea. Never really understood the attraction of KG - just becoming more lazy?
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I had a Citroen Xantia in the early nineties that had one of those keypads, seem to remember it been a bit of a pain after the novelty wore off.
Mind a keypad immobilizer saved Jason Statham a couple of times in the Transporter films lol
 
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