Ever had your CAT stolen?
No, not the one that goes ‘meeow’ and scratches your best furniture. I’m talking about that bit of your car usually in the middle of the exhaust that cleans out harmful pollutants before releasing fumes into the atmosphere. It’s fitted to all Petrol cars since 1993.
Here is the bottom of my lovely Lexus RX400h with the CAT missing:
Notice the clean pipe break? Thanks to modern handheld battery powered Sawzall type tools it is really, really easy to cut out the pipes and remove the Catalytic converter on most cars.
That was the FIRST of 3 times in total a CAT was stolen from this same car of mine. Crazy!
That CAT contains some fairly rare and valuable base elements which have skyrocketed in value because they are, urmmm….rare! These are Palladium, Rhodium and Platinum.
- Palladium sells for £1,848 per ounce.
- Rhodium is a whopper priced at £12,469 per ounce.
- Platinum is relatively cheap at £787 per ounce.
- For comparison gold is worth £1,459.16
The higher the price of these elements, the more of a problem this becomes.
Why is it getting worse?
The car industry doesn’t care, this problem affects cars that are usually well out of warranty and the car industry has no liability. In fact if anything they make more money from people needing repairs and replacement after their CAT has been nicked.
The Police don’t care either, very little action if any is taken. Even if you provide CCTV, provide information on the vehicle they may have arrived in, it’s highly unlikely (from experience btw) that they will do little more than ask you to report the crime using the online reporting form. Just so you can get a Crime Reference number
Which leads to Insurance companies who love this, they can put in a no-fault claim against you and bump up your premiums. They can refer you to dodgy repairers who make a bucket load of cash to repair your car and get it back on the road as a target once again.
Thieves love it…easy job, next to no comeback, easy to shift. It’s pretty pathetic actually, the guys doing the thieving are at the bottom of the feeder chain – they probably earn £30-40 for each CAT they fence off. Which is absolute crap for the horrendous problems it causes for the victims.
The graph above shows lift-off for CAT thefts just in the West Midlands region. The 2022 figure is an estimate based upon thefts to August 2022 (so far 1092).
The Targets – ode to the Japanese
These are the most highly targeted cars. Thinking of buying one 2nd hand? Think again, I would strongly advise against it. Hybrids mostly, this is NOT a comprehensive list.
- Lexus RX400h 2005-2009
- Toyota Prius 2004-2009 and 2009-2016
- Toyota Auris 2012-2018
- Honda Jazz
- Honda CRV
What can I do?
Not much. See more from Toyota, read the comments – they are fun!
Smart water eh? Clever!
CatLoc – is it worth it? Just means more effort for the crooks. They can still get them off if they have enough time.
Straight pipe? Your insurance is invalidated, you won’t pass the emissions test on next MOT and you’ll just end up in trouble (which really is unfair, cos the thieving b******ds causing all this get away, scot free).