(Paris) A hybrid car, the Toyota Prius, took the lead in the ranking of the most stolen cars for the first time in 2021, according to data from insurers analyzed and published Thursday by the magazine Auto More.
Posted at 10:22
With 227 thefts per 10,000 cars, the Toyota Prius tops Auto Plus magazine’s annual ranking, based on data from nine insurers (the ranking does not include the least popular cars, including certain brands of luxury).
It’s not necessarily for the reasons one would think.
Its catalytic converter is trafficked for the rare metals it contains, whose prices are soaring on the markets.
Excerpt from a magazine article Auto More
The hybrid Toyota overtakes the luxurious DS 7 Crossback SUV and the sporty Renault Mégane RS, first and second in the rankings in 2020, which come in second and third in 2021.
Other very popular models follow in the ranking: the Renault Clio 4 and Mégane 4, the Peugeot 3008 and Toyota C-HR SUVs, the DS 3 and Peugeot 208 compacts.
With 122,700 thefts of cars and two-wheelers, these thefts remained in 2021 at a lower level than before the pandemic, close to the figures for 2020, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior. Already down before 2020, they had fallen sharply with the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns.
Thefts from vehicles remained at their 2020 level, with 225,400 facts found, while thefts of accessories increased slightly (+4%) after years of decline, with 77,300 facts found, according to the Ministry of Interior.
In the Paris region, more than 10,000 cars (-7.9%) and 10,000 two-wheelers (-20.8%) were stolen in 2021, according to the police headquarters.
More than one in two households whose car was stolen ends up finding it, compared to two in five households who are victims of two-wheeler theft, according to the ministry.