NRMA's anti-theft ratings
Cars from Europe are more secure than Asian cars, but Subaru gets an honourable mentionFans of 'CSI' will recall Mike Keppler (played by Liev Schreiber) smashing a car window with a spark plug to mimic a gunshot blast.
It looked too easy.
And that is born out by anti-theft ratings of current production cars compiled by the National Roads and Motoring Association (NRMA). Some cars are definitely more susceptible to forced entry than others.
The NRMA's method for assessing a car's security include ease of entry, ignition lock/switch construction, original equipment ('OE') engine immobiliser, OE car alarm, miscellaneous devices (such as locking wheel nuts) and stereo security provided by the vehicle.
Some of these are a given (the immobiliser is mandated by Australian Design Rule, for example), but the cars that perform better in this survey tended to be more expensive to purchase -- and therefore better equipped -- in the first place.
Since Japanese and Korean cars (and Malaysian, in the case of Proton) are volume-sellers marketed at a lower price level, some content was left out for the Australian market. Frequently, that content prevents the bad guys breaking into the car.
Subaru was something of an exception. After years of reading news reports concerning WRX being the active constituent in ram raids, Subaru has stepped up security for all models.
In many cases, Subaru models benefited in the ratings survey through the 'DataDot' identification system, which is applied to all Subaru models and allows them an 'easy' 100-point score in the NRMA rating system against the 'ID' criteria -- the category which assesses a car's resistance to being 'rebirthed'.
'ID' was a very low priority for small cars. Not one scored more than ten points and most didn't get a point on the board.
'Winners' in the various categories were: Citroen C3 (small cars), Audi A3 quattro 3.2 (small/medium cars), Subaru Liberty wagon (medium cars), Mitsubishi 380 ES (large cars), Audi A8 (luxury cars; Audi took the top four places in this category), Audi S4 (sports cars), Subaru Tribeca (people movers), Audi Q7 (4WDs), Volkswagen Caddy (vans), Mazda BT-50 (utilities).
The categories used by the NRMA do not conform to the same segmentation as VFACTS, so the Tribeca was listed as a 'people mover' in the survey, rather than a 4WD ('SUV' in VFACTS).
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