Good point. You don't seem to hear as much about seat theft anymore. Perhaps not as rampant as in the past...

 

Or all of our seats are mostly trashed and people stopped looking for them :P

 

I also wonder if our seats just do not fit into anything newer and thus the market for stolen ones has decreased. There are still a lot of older hondas running around that they would fit, but I am not sure what the last year model was that they could plop right into.

 

Back in the days the stolen seats went into thieves civics/integras/etc. These days thieves steal whole cars just to upgrade their own salvage/older/high mileage s2000s. From engine/transmission to suspension components to complete interiors.

 

I don’t even leave mine anywhere. Got it scratch once at the movies and decided I’ll never leave her again. I dine outside next to the car or just drive her around and take it home. What else can you do?

Eric

PS, I do have seat locks and alarm and I’m getting ready to put a camera that uploads to the cloud through Wi-Fi or the cellular system. At least I’ll know who got it!

 

It varies for a lot of us and there is an "in the middle" balance. My car normally has cone scars, brake dust, etc all over it. It gets autocrossed and driven on a track. I do take some care in where I leave it, but if I was scared to leave it out of my sight I would not own it. Dont care to drive a car that I am afraid to take anywhere. Then it becomes just for show which is not worth much to me. Yes, I take care in where I leave it and dont leave it parked in areas where I am scared of it being outright stolen, but there is no fun in owning shiny car that I cant take anywhere. Especially this car. Summertime, convertible, I am going to take it places and enjoy it when I am not tossing it around a course or track.

 

I'm curious as to what engifineer's guide to safer parking might look like.

 

Probably common sense things.

 

Common sense things :P Dont park it downtown overnight.

Dont park it in areas where it is hidden with no people around (Aka choose the parking lot that is busy as hell instead, since no one knows which of those people walking by own said car if they are looking to break in)

Avoid parking in high theft areas of course if I know the area well and know which areas those are

If I have the easy choice, park next to a 4 door vs a 2 door (2 doors typically have longer doors aka much more chance of door dings)

If I have to park somewhere overnight and am local, I just take one of the other cars.

Like I said, nothing crazy, but just using common sense to attempt not to park in obvious areas where it may be stolen or damaged. Nothing is foolproof, so all you can do is just take easy measures to avoid issues or limit driving the car, which the latter to me starts to make having the car not make sense.

 

We just got back from our 30 day, 21 state 8300 mile drive(mid US going east, down south going west) and the only time the top was up was when we stopped for the night. I just don't worry about what "might" happen, if I did that I might as well have done this trip in my '99 pickup. We are looking at doing a northern trip(west to east up in Canada back to the west in the northern US) next year.

Just drive it,
Rod