Buy These Cars If You Want Them Stolen

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 5, 7:00AM EST

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Buy These Cars If You Want Them Stolen — © 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz (CC BY 2.0) by Greg Gjerdingen

The number of stolen cars per 100,000 people in the United States rose each year from 2019 to 2022. The raw number is large as well. The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) reports over a million cars were stolen in America in 2022. Hyundai and Kia models especially appear to have been targeted for theft, and that trend continued early in 2023.

About this car theft trend, CNN reported, “Theft insurance claims for vulnerable Hyundais and Kias increased more than 1000% between the first half of 2020 and the first half of 2023.” The news outlet got the information from the Highway Loss Data Institute. Hyundai’s theft rate was usually high at 11.2 per 1,000 vehicles during that period. (See where your car is most likely to be stolen in each state.)

Why These Cars Are Stolen

The problem appears to be that some older models the two South Korean companies have sold have ignition systems that make the cars easier to steal. Word of this has spread among car thieves. And the problem has cost the companies money. A consumer class action suit claimed Kia and Hyundai did not do enough to protect their vehicles from theft. That led to a $200 million settlement.

Kia and Hyundai sales have surged in the United States over the past several years. Brands from Germany and Japan have dominated the American market, along with those from Ford, General Motors and, at one point, Chrysler. The two South Korean brands have received particularly good reviews from car research firms.

The two brands are also attractive to Americans because of their pricing. As the average price of a new car has increased above $40,000, the prices for several Kia and Hyundai and models are well below that. The question is, do people want a deal on cars that are likely to be targets of car thieves?

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.