Chevrolet There's no shortage of "these are the most stolen cars" articles, and they're usually grounded in research by the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The problem with these lists is that the NICB is looking at aggregate theft data (that is, how many of each model are stolen across the country in a year). There are certainly trends to observe — the organization has been keeping an eye on the Hyundai/Kia situation for years — but while a vehicle could top the list by being a laughably stealable security risk, it can also get there by being a Honda Accord, which took the No. 2 spot (between two Hyundais) on the NICB list in 2025 despite having no widely recognized security vulnerabilities. There are just a whole lot of Accords out there, so a whole lot of Accords get stolen. A new study from the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), published via the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), flips that script by measuring thefts relative to how many of each vehicle actually exist. The result is a look at vehicle thefts through a whole new lens, with the top 10 including few of the perennial "hottest car" list favorites. There are no hilariously vulnerable Kias or Hyundais, no relentlessly common Hondas or Toyotas, and not a punchline of an Altima to be found. So sit back, scan your block for nefarious car thieves, and find out if it's time to buy The Club for your ride. 10. Ram 1500 Crew Cab Short Wheelbase 4WD Artistic Operations/Getty Images This is just the 10th most stolen vehicle on the list, but we're going to point out a trend that will pop up a few times before we're done. Four-wheel-drive crew cab pickups are in danger. The combustion-powered Ram 1500 is surprisingly complicated, with its various drivetrain and cab configurations spread out over 10 trim packages, from the humble Tradesman to the illustrious Tungsten, which carries an $88,800 suggested price before options and $2,595 destination charge. We bring that up just to point out that modern workhorse pickup trucks can also carry borderline luxury energy, with price tags to match. The infotainment screens alone have proven irresistible to thieves, and while that doesn't contribute to the theft totals we're discussing today, it does demonstrate that the bad guys have an eye on the Rams. They also have the key fobs. Or at least clones of them. Like the compromised Mercedes cars in "Gone in 60 Seconds," in recent years hundreds of vehicles across multiple states have been boosted by a handful of criminals who managed to make their own copies of Dodge fobs, including those of the Ram 1500. To add insult to injury, they then dumped their ill-gotten autos on the illicit market for as low as $3,500. Anyway, before we move on, here's how to protect yourself from keyless car theft. 9. Land Rover Range Rover 4WD Artistic Operations/Getty Images First of all, as part of our ongoing public service education work, we'll point out that Range Rover is a subbrand of Land Rover, which is a subbrand of Tata motors. It's a little confusing, but necessary if you want to accurately point fingers about an ongoing security vulnerability that left its $100,000-plus luxury SUVs vulnerable to being stolen after having their key fob signals intercepted over the air. The result was a $20-million effort announced in 2023 to roll out software updates and work with affected owners to get them installed. But here's the thing. That whole mess was limited to vehicles manufactured between 2018 and 2022, with the problem resolved under a new electronic architecture in place since. So while no manufacturer wants to show up on a list like this, it probably stung especially in the case of Land Rover. We mean Range Rover. No, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), wholly owned subsidiary of the Tata Group. That's because the model years that showed up in the new HLDI data ran from '22 to '24, firmly in what Land Rover calls its "resilient to theft" era. Better luck next year? 8. Dodge Durango 4WD Artistic Operations/Getty Images As Durango Hellcat owners lose their lawsuit over their "limited edition" vehicle investments, we've kind of formally adjudicated that treating your Durango as a collector's item isn't a great idea. But that doesn't mean it isn't an attractive theft target. Matt Moore, chief insurance operations officer at HLDI and IIHS, points out that "Muscle cars have often topped this list, as thieves are attracted to vehicles with high horsepower." And while maybe car thieves are scoping up Durangos because of impressive towing capacity and pleasantly surprising infotainment system, it's also possible that it has to do with the Durango being what Car & Driver describes as "the closest thing to a three-row muscle car," even if you don't opt for the definitively-not-collectible Hellcat edition. Oh, it doesn't really help that you can carefully remove the windshield from the outside and then program a new key fob on the spot, as some folks in Pennsylvania discovered when they came outside to their Durangoless windshield lying thoughtfully (and unhelpfully) on the ground. As additional evidence of key fob vulnerabilities, a couple of guys in Michigan are accused of stealing more than 25 Durangos right off of dealership lots. Evidently, the criminal underbelly yearns for a powerful three-row SUV. 7. Chevrolet Silverado 3500 Crew Cab 4WD Jonathan Weiss/Shutterstock See? We told you 4WD crew cabs weren't safe. The Chevrolet Silverado HD is built to tow and haul, but that won't do you much good if you come outside to an empty parking spot (or two; we see how some of you animals park these things). While it's possible this is simply more evidence of highly capable heavy-duty American trucks getting plucked for their utility, there's also some evidence that General Motors has a key fob issue of its own, with a whole bunch of Silverados and (spoiler alert for the next entry on our list) GMC Sierras ending up stolen and headed to Mexico using electronic security compromises similar to the ones that have come up already. Vulnerabilities aside, the 3500 Crew Cab 4WD compares well to the more entry-level Ram we began with above. This is a serious work truck and thieves are apparently going quite deep into the more capable end of Chevy's lineup — these start at $53,595 plus $2,795 destination charge, and can easily exceed $75,000 before options with the High Country variant. When it comes to the key fob attacks, there's presumably not much different in terms of effort when you jump from the base model Silverado to something like this, so maybe it's not that surprising, but it's still a little fun to think about the apparently plausible scenario of some black-market truck buyer weighing how much extra he's willing to pay for one with the Duramax 6.6 that can tow 36,000 pounds (of additional stolen merchandise, perhaps?). 6. GMC Sierra 3500 Crew Cab 4WD JoshBryan/Shutterstock If you really know what you're doing, you can walk up to a GMC Sierra 3500, disable the horn through the grill (and thus kill the alarm noise), and make off with the truck in under three minutes. That's just one super-specific example of a wider trend in GMC truck thefts, and it wouldn't be a crazy leap to assume there's some overlap with the electronic vulnerabilities already established under the General Motors umbrella with the Chevys discussed already. From a GM brand standpoint, it's maybe worth an internal PowerPoint slide somewhere that the Sierra 3500 and the Silverado 3500 — product portfolio siblings with essentially identical underpinnings — landed right next to each other in the HLDI data. Perhaps at the end of the day people actually aren't that discriminating when it comes to what badge you slap on the front, at least not if you're just hustling out of the suburbs and across the southern border. Anyway, did we mention that a version of the GMC Sierra 3500 HD now starts at over $100,000? 5. Acura TLX 2WD Artistic Operations/Getty Images We don't really know what to say about this one. Acura killed the TLX after only selling 7,478 of them in 2024 and apparently a good chunk of them were stolen anyway. Together with the even higher-ranking 4WD TLX, you'll notice that the Acura is the only sedan on today's list. Even if you zoom out to the top 20, you'll still only find one other, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class (long wheelbase) down in the 18th spot — and still with the caveat that we're talking about relative theft frequency. A long-wheelbase S-Class isn't exactly a Ford F-150 in terms of sales volume. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be an obvious, widely documented smoking-gun behind TLX theft rates. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration previously exempted it from federal parts-marking requirements after concluding its standard immobilizer-based anti-theft system was likely to be effective. But there isn't a specific vulnerability stemming from that, so your guess is probably as good as anybody's. 4. GMC Sierra 2500 Crew Cab 4WD Jonathan Weiss/Shutterstock This is, mercifully, the last of the pickups on this list. Even though the other GM variants we've already discussed share the same vulnerabilities and ultimately the same fate, this is the model that made the biggest media splash in the "they're comin' for your pickups" genre of local news. That said, expensive, work-focused trucks surely seem to remain highly desirable in illicit markets. Like its smaller sibling, the 1500, you can push these quite high in terms of suggested price with the available Denali packages, except in this case the Denali Ultimate can get you all the way up to $94,200 before options and $2,795 destination charge. But for those of you who enjoy some rampant speculation to go with their data-driven actuarial analysis of insurance data, we'll at least attempt to oblige. Based strictly on the data set, the off-roading GMC Sierra 2500 HD AT4X falls under the "GMC Sierra 2500 Crew Cab 4WD" umbrella, meaning that we can't say that these theft numbers aren't driven purely by the enthusiasm of nefarious characters who simply appreciate the awesome capability of one of the coolest all-terrain trucks you can buy from the factory. So maybe it's that? (It's probably not that.) 3. Chevrolet Camaro Photosvit/Getty Images Finally! We were getting a little frustrated with that HLDI guy we quoted back in the Durango section, who promised muscle cars before providing nothing but pickup trucks and an Acura sedan ever since — until now. The (since discontinued) Chevy Camaro marks a shift into performance territory, with a look and feel finally worthy of Grand Theft Auto opening the door to, well ... grand theft auto. So why a Camaro and not a Mustang, or maybe one of those Challengers with the lip guard still on the front splitter? It's that key fob vulnerability again. GM issued a recall (sorry, we mean "customer satisfaction program") on this one, offering a body control module update after some areas reported Camaro thefts spiking more than 1,000%, directly attributable to key fob cloning, sometimes perpetrated by literal children. Except this time, instead of snatching signals out of the air or gaining access to an actual fob, thieves are managing to pull key codes directly from the OBD-II port, taking advantage of a diagnostic interface that really probably shouldn't include access to that sort of thing. So since we're not sure if the Camaro will ever come back as a Chevy offering, you might want to go out of your way to keep yours safe if you have one. 2. Acura TLX 4WD David S. Swierczek/Shutterstock You didn't lose your place. It's a slightly different TLX. The Acura TLX 4WD has doubled up Acura near the top of our list here, and it's frankly kind of annoying that the HLDI made this distinction between the two drivetrains. There are no obvious security exploits or electronic vulnerabilities that apply to the 4WD as compared to the 2WD and really the story here is that people want these Acura sedans badly enough to steal them, yet not enough to purchase them in sufficient volumes to keep them in the lineup. All that said, we did put some thought into what might be at least a contributing factor for what's going on here and didn't come up completely empty-handed. This entry in the data would include the Type S. The Acura TLX Type S is a different kind of AWD sport sedan. It has performance that's Machines With Souls compared to "a four-door NSX," and if that doesn't at least put it into the sports car conversation with a base model Camaro, we're not sure what does. But importantly, every Type S is all-wheel drive, meaning that if (big, big if, to be clear) would-be car thieves are looking for a high-performance good time, perhaps with some legendary Japanese reliability, then they might opt for a TLX Type S, and in doing so boost the theft rate reflected in the "Acura TLX 4WD" data. It's a theory, anyway. Call us next time you want to dig into the story behind the story, HLDI. 1. Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 Chevrolet (Boss music plays.) Putting a satisfying bow on this whole data-driven exercise, it's the Camaro ZL1. It's exactly the kind of vehicle that gets overlooked in the usual "most stolen cars" lists because there simply aren't that many of them, and frankly it's a little bit fun to imagine Nicolas Cage doing a "Gone in 60 Seconds" reboot that includes tearing off in a 650-horsepower supercharged V8 hero car with a manual transmission for those quick cinematic shots from inside the pedal box. The ZL1 has all of the same security vulnerabilities as the base model Camaro we covered earlier, plus the fierce looks and exceptional performance that make it an icon worthy of risking jail time. Taken together, the result is that the Chevy Camaro ZL1 is 39 times more likely to be stolen than the average car and gaps the competition in taking its spot at the top of this list. Well done, Chevy. If only you'd keep making 'em.
