Ford trucks popular targets for auto thieves in Alberta: insurance bureau

CTV Edmonton: Alberta a hotspot for car thefts High-end vehicles are often stolen and shipped to overseas markets – but the Insurance Bureau of Canada believes Alberta is becoming a go-to destination.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada has released this year’s top 10 list of vehicles most often targeted by auto thieves – and the list in Alberta shows Ford Trucks are a major target.

IBC released their annual listing of the 10 most stolen vehicles in the Country Friday – which features a perennial favourite for car thieves.

The two-door Honda Civic SiR from 1999 to 2000 made the first and second spots on the list.

“It would be needed for parts, because they are older vehicles, and that’s what we think is they’re being chopped for parts,” Investigative Services VP Rick Dubin said in a phone interview.

Another popular model made the list, multiple times, for the fourth year in a row – Ford F350s from various years took four spots on the national list.

The full list is as follows:

“We feel that because we’re not seeing them at any type of ports for export, there’s a very strong likelihood that they’re going to where the demand is, and that most probably is Alberta,” Dubin said.

It’s believed in many of those cases, the Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN) are changed, and the stolen trucks are sold to consumers in Alberta.

However, Staff Sgt. Dan Service with the EPS Auto Theft Unit said there’s sometimes more to stealing a car than reselling it.

“The vast majority of them are theft by opportunity, where someone wants to get from one end of the city to the other, and simply takes a car off someone’s driveway that’s running, or perhaps finds a set of keys,” Staff Sgt. Service said.

More than 80,000 vehicles were stolen in Canada in 2011, 13,000 of those were stolen in Alberta – they’re numbers officials have seen drop in recent years.

Both Police and IBC officials believe the drop is due to newer models coming with high-tech anti-theft equipment such as electronic immobilizers.

“They’re being replaced by vehicles that are much harder to steal, and that’s one of the reasons you’re seeing a decline in auto theft,” Service said.

Consumers should watch for a number of red flags when buying a used vehicle – such as ensuring the VIN on the windshield matches the number on the door pillar.

With files from Amanda Anderson