With my campervan, relatively high value, I couldn’t get insurance without such a tracker. And my occasional accidental triggering of it confirms that it does what it says on the tin! (Also anywhere I might leave it overnight unoccupied has to be pre-agreed with the insurance company.)
I have no problem with cars - but then I never buy new cars, and in the event of having a model that is particularly targetable I remove badges to make it look like a base model, so less desirable.
Hi Peter
Emailed Lexus Twickenham and they have just rung back and my car is booked in for a foc protection plate next Tuesday. The service manager said there was a shortage of plates. Lexus should have a recall of all 450h cars to get this work done but meanwhile just chase your dealer!
I did buy a steering wheel lock - the Stoplock Pro Elite as until the thieves know that all/most 450h cars have had this work done they may still rip off your wheel arch. I note that the Disklok is a popular choice but I am 73 next month and I wanted something that was a bit lighter. Auto Express had a review of steering wheel locks and found that the Disklok didn’t fit all the car models in the test which put me off. They rated the Stoplock Pro Elite as the best overall.
Thanks again Peter for your advice.
I always thought they were useless. You just cut through the steering wheel to get them off. I always thought you needed something to cover the steering wheel itself, like a disklock.
It is a useful read. Shocking that one of the Halfords steering wheel locks could be removed in less than 5 seconds which is less time than using the key!
They are handy for leverage to break the steering lock first before junior hacksawing the steering wheel.
I had an amusing issue with my steering lock. I have been driving the SLK with a friend’s dog in the passenger seat, so to avoid her getting clunked by the lock I stuck it in the boot when the dog was in the car. I then started getting warning messages that my rear number plate lights weren’t working, but they were fine when I checked. I had the garage look at it when I had my MOT, they couldn’t reproduce it. I eventually realised it was only when I had the lock in the boot, if I accelerated the lock was pushing on the back of the sensor and it showed an issue until I turned the car off and on again.
Remember Autoloks? The handbrake/gear lever thing? They reduced the number of tools that the thief needed to take your car.
May I add one perhaps obvious piece of advice. When my friends went on holiday thieves broke into their house and used the car keys left in the house to steal two cars. If we go on holiday in my wife’s car I shall take my car keys with me.
In Manchester as a stude in 1990 with… drum roll… an Audi 2.2 coupe that looked like a Quattro but wasn’t removing the distributor arm was 100% reliable. Probably took as much time as fitting a steering lock. It got broken into endlessly, but never nicked.
I made the mistake once of removing the rotor arm as a security measure. In a lack of forward planning, I had failed to take into account it would be dark by the time we returned to the car.
I had to put the rotor arm on by feel, resulting in considerable misfiring until I was able to reseat it in daylight 
Having said all that, it was a Vauxhall Ventora FDII. No wonder the British car industry went down the pan…
I have seen Range Rovers, Porsches with those silly little stoplocks fitted and could not help but chuckle to myself. If you can afford a Taycan, surely you can afford a Disklock?
Is that because it had a rotor arm? Or cos it was crap generally?
In this video it shows any lock including a Disklok can be removed in a few minutes using a battery powered grinder. Only 15/16mm chain will be a real problem for thieves.
Is not the core question though, if a manu makes a car which costs so much, why can’t they install an effective security system? – adding a steering wheel lock, shouldn’t be necessary, should it?
They must be missing/losing sales as a consequence of all this.
Yes I fully agree. Lexus have belatedly fitted my protection plate but the software security should be made more robust. Presumably most of the stolen cars are being sent via container ports to RHD counties. Couldn’t the containers be scanned??
TBH, it was sh!te. Having said that, the points/rotor arm proved more reliable than the Sparkrite electronic ignition that I had fitted.
The thing is a few minutes using a battery-powered grinder is a considerable improvement over the alternative of losing your car quietly in seconds… Every little helps, I suppose.
I quite agree. Problem is, if anti-theft devices are basically electronic, somebody with electronics will find a way past them.
I certainly don’t have an answer; all you can do is make it more difficult to steal quickly.
Angle grinders are not quiet so the car would have to be in a remote location rather than outside your house.
A Stoplok is easily removed with a junior hacksaw with no noise at all.
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.