By Harrison Kral
Family Handyman's Editorial Process
Published on Aug. 21, 2025
The list of 2025’s most and least stolen new cars is out. Is yours on the list?
For a car thief, stealing someone’s vehicle means a potentially juicy payout. For the person whose car is being stolen, it means you’re suddenly faced with a major inconvenience and can look forward to hours of painful communication with an insurance company — not to mention the loss of anything that was in the car at the time of the theft.
When you’re shopping for a new vehicle, the frequency with which it gets stolen should be something you research before seriously considering any model. The Highway Loss Data Institute recently shared data highlighting the most and least frequently stolen new cars, with theft rates based on insurance claim data for car models released from 2022 to 2024. Here’s a look at those rankings and what the data tells us about how thieves select vehicles to steal.
Modern vehicles are outfitted with all kinds of anti-theft technology. Unfortunately, thieves know this, and they do everything they can to exploit these countermeasures. The Camaro ZL1, which tops the list of most stolen new vehicles, is a target for a few reasons: its potential payoff, its beefy horsepower, and the fact that thieves have discovered a technical glitch that allows them to clone the car’s key fobs much more easily than other models.
“We expect powerful and high-value vehicles to be targeted, and these models check both those boxes,” said Matt Moore, chief insurance operations officer at HLDI and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
A series of electric cars topped the list of least stolen vehicles, which makes sense. Because electric vehicles need to be charged, they’re more frequently stored in garages, making them much harder and more inconvenient for thieves to target. Ultimately, convenience is one of the main motivating factors for car thieves, making inconvenience one of the more powerful deterrents.
If you want to protect your car from thieves, here are some of the most tried-and-true methods.
Many thieves will try to hot-wire or physically brute-force your vehicle’s ignition to get the car to start without a key. Immobilizers keep your car from moving even if a thief manages to get it started.
Car thieves work in darkness for a reason: the less attention they attract, the better. A loud, annoying alarm will make it impossible for them to work stealthily, drawing a crowd to your vehicle the longer it goes on.
Want to deter a thief before they even get inside your vehicle? Put a lock on your steering wheel. A thief will take one look at the bulky device locked to your wheel and turn around. Steering wheel locks make it impossible to fully turn the steering wheel to steer a car, so even if a thief does manage to start your car, they won’t get far.
If all else fails and thieves do manage to steal your car, having some sort of tracking system onboard can be the difference between a successful theft and the police being able to recover your property. Often, your dealership will be able to install some sort of vehicle recovery device. Otherwise, your solution could be as simple as slipping an AirTag behind the backseat.
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