Radio Theft Problem

February 19, 2011

I am looking at buying one the the latest T2 Sprints which come with £1700 worth of extras including Sat nav, bluetooth etc. When I looked at the car yesterday I was surprised to see that the radio had a removable front and I believe that this also had the bluetooth and Sat Nav incorporated. I was rather surprised by this design feature because I thought removable fronts were a thing of the past - and it will be a pain in the a**e having to take it out every time we leave the car - because all car radios have been integrated for years to overcome theft problems.

However as a former police officer and attempt radio theft victim (thieves used to continue to break into such cars to steal the radio because they knew that most people just hid the removable front in the glove box and the unit in the dashboard was easy to remove using U-clips. I always removed my front from the vehicle didn't but that stop one delightful person smashing their way in to find out).

So my questions are:

1. Is this two-part radio !Removed! sat nav a recent development? If not, is there a history of thefts?

2. How easy is it to remove the base unit from the car? I have seen YouTube videos and instructions on this forum that show how to carefully remove the trim - thieves don't have as much care and once word gets round their 'community' then these sort of thefts will be rife.

TIA

David Anson

February 19, 2011

I am looking at buying one the the latest T2 Sprints which come with £1700 worth of extras including Sat nav, Bluetooth etc. When I looked at the car yesterday I was surprised to see that the radio had a removable front and I believe that this also had the Bluetooth and Sat Nav incorporated. I was rather surprised by this design feature because I thought removable fronts were a thing of the past - and it will be a pain in the a**e having to take it out every time we leave the car - because all car radios have been integrated for years to overcome theft problems.
However as a former police officer and attempt radio theft victim (thieves used to continue to break into such cars to steal the radio because they knew that most people just hid the removable front in the glove box and the unit in the dashboard was easy to remove using U-clips. I always removed my front from the vehicle didn't but that stop one delightful person smashing their way in to find out).
So my questions are:
1. Is this two-part radio !Removed! sat nav a recent development? If not, is there a history of thefts?
2. How easy is it to remove the base unit from the car? I have seen YouTube videos and instructions on this forum that show how to carefully remove the trim - thieves don't have as much care and once word gets round their 'community' then these sort of thefts will be rife.
TIA
David Anson

I agree! My wife used to have a Suzuki Alto which had exactly that sort of radio... The scroats smashed the side window, removed the base unit, not carefully, and missed the removable front we had indoors!! They came back two weeks later, didnt check to see if we had replaced the radio, we hadn't, and smashed the window again!!

I for one will never again buy a car with a removable radio front !! Not worth it, and if that means the end of over 20 years with Mr T's cars then.....

February 19, 2011

Its funny you should say that , my mum and I were in looking at one of these t-spirits yesterday (shes thinking of buying one and running it for a year and a half then giving it to me when im 17) and the dealer said they had been taking the removable sat navs out the cars because people had been asking to see the car then stealing the sat nav, she also pointed out that the removable tom tom can be used on any car (im not sure about charging) pretty low if you ask me...

February 19, 2011

This is just as I thought. I am sorry but this is a deal-breaker for me (my wife and I were about to sign on the dotted line) and I am still coming to terms with the stupidity of Toyota's decision to install this type of satnav. All I can think is that the people at Toyota who made the decision are all under 30 and those at Tomtom are of a similar age. It saddens me greatly because I am a chartered engineer and have an MSc in Total Quality Management during which I studied the life story of the Toyoda brothers who "adopted the philosophy of total quality management in 1964" - the year after I was born!! No wonder the !Removed! made mincemeat of the US and UK manufacturing industry.

However I was a victim of the last recession and was a police officer from 92 - 96 before leaving and starting my own police-training business which I still run. I saw the problems with removable-front radios first hand from attending so many reports of their theft (in a day when we did that sort of thing!). At first we thought that the thieves were watching people as they were leaving their vehicles and if they saw them put the radio front into the glove box or under the passenger seat then they would break in and steal the front as well as take out the radio chassis - these were only held in by spring-clips which could be removed with a U tool or more often just screw drivered out. However we were giving our 'customers' more credit than they deserved. Most of them were heroin addicts needing the radio to fence for their next fix, they were not so organised as to be watching people leaving their cars. All they did was look for cars that had the radio front removed and break in anyway because they knew 9 times out of 10 that they would find the front in the glove box or under the seat. So it did not matter if you were the 1 in 10 who always took yours with you, you had to deal with a broken window or a screw-drivered door.

When I left the police my first 'nice' car was a 4-door BMW 318i which had such a radio. I always took the front out (or put it in the boot which was secure) and came out one morning to find the driver's window smashed and the glove box open - nothing taken. No other car in the row had been broken into so it wasn't someone just looking in glove boxes for cash.

At the time the police were urging all car manufacturers to make the stereo equipement an integral part of the dashboard which has now been done so that now theft of car stereos is a generally a thing of the past - thieves don't like to be in a car for more than 10 seconds.

The Yaris T2 Spirit is going to suffer the same fate. Thieves will know that the Spirit Badge means it has a non-integral satnav and whether it has been removed or not they will break in because they will (rightly) assume that most people will have put it in the glove box or under the car seat. It doesn't even matter if there is allegedly no way of the sat nav working without being attached to the body, they will still nick it and try to sell it in the pub. I am also concerned that the chassis may be removable without too much effort. Videos on You Tube and diagrams on this site show you how to easily remove the trim without causing damage - your average thief has no concern for the damage caused and will simply break the moulding off.

The only consequence I can see of this cost-saving decision to make the satnav removable rather than integral is that within 3 years the T2 Spirit will have been put up an insurance group due to the thefts and owners will be getting sick of replacing broken side windows.

Sorry Toyota/TomTom (and I don't just think it is Toyota who have fallen for this idea from TomTom). You screwed up on this one big style and as an engineer and former police officer I am both surprised and very saddened.

Still like the Yaris as a car and Bill Merrick at Pentagon in Sheffield has worked wonders to come up with the solution of a TR with protection pack - gives me all the stuff I wanted without the problems.

February 20, 2011

Being lucky enough to not have had a car break in my perception might be the other way. I'd never buy a car with a built in GPS asgetting map updates and software updates would be a right PITA if almost impossible.

February 22, 2011

Still like the Yaris as a car and Bill Merrick at Pentagon in Sheffield has worked wonders to come up with the solution of a TR with protection pack - gives me all the stuff I wanted without the problems.