The full-size Ford pickup, traditionally the top-selling U.S. pickup, also became the most stolen vehicle of 2019, according to a National Insurance Crime Bureau report.
NICB’s “Hot Wheels: America’s Top Ten Most Stolen Vehicle Makes” measures theft data submitted by law enforcement to the National Crime Information Center.
The Ford pickup moved to the top spot from third place in last year’s report with 38,938 thefts,up from 36,355 the year before. The most stolen model year for the F-Series is 2006.
Tully Lehman, a spokesman for NICB, told Automotive News that Ford has been on the list before but never at the top.
One of the reasons for a high number of thefts is the number of vehicles out there. “There are a lot of Ford pickups on the road,” Lehman said.
Ford’s F-Series has been the top-selling pickup in the U.S. for 43 years, and the automaker sold 896,526 of them in 2019, a 1.4 percent drop from 2018.
The most stolen vehicle of 2018 was the Honda Civic with 38,426 thefts, but they decreased by nearly 14 percent in 2019, giving the Civic the second-place spot.
The Chevrolet pickup lineup was third, with 1,017 more thefts in 2019 than in 2018.
The report found that 2019’s most stolen model year was the 2000 Honda Civic with 4,731 thefts.
Jeep fell out of the top 10, replaced by the Honda CR-V with 10,094 thefts.
Lehman said sometimes its not the vehicle that criminals want, but the valuables inside or even the car’s parts.
“You have to think like a criminal,” he said.
NICB works to prevent insurance fraud and vehicle theft through data collection and analytics.