Thieves stole my car using a fiendish new device disguised as a Game Boy. So I tracked it down and stole it back myself: ALEX BANNISTER
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This is not the Monday morning I had planned. I was meant to be in a business meeting in west London at 9.30. Instead, it's 9.45 and I'm gingerly venturing into a north London council estate on the rougher edges of Edmonton.
My suit and tie are incongruous and I've already attracted the attention of a suspicious-looking local who is monitoring me and my neighbour's every move.
As my friend Jim and I head further into the estate, the summer sun – uncommonly hot on this early June day – is burning into me, and I feel a bead of sweat forming on the back of my neck. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea.
And then I see it. Parked squarely in a bay outside one of the council blocks is my matte-silver Hyundai Ioniq 5, the same vehicle that mysteriously disappeared from my north London street in the middle of last night.
There's not a scratch on it. No broken window nor forced lock. Both its keys are still safely in my pocket. And yet here it is, neatly berthed seven miles and a world away from the leafy street where I'd parked it.
This is the culmination of a frantic hour and a half after my wife and I realised we'd become the latest victims of car theft. We're far from alone. Car thefts in England and Wales have nearly doubled in the past decade from 70,053 in the year to March 2014 to 129,127 last year – a rise of 84 per cent. Insurance rates are going through the roof and the police seem unable – or unwilling – to stop it.
And the biggest reason for this sudden surge? Keyless car theft.
It's estimated that almost half of all thefts last year were of keyless cars. Instead of the old-fashioned methods of smashing windows and forcing locks, modern thieves use sophisticated devices to intercept the signal between a car and its owner's electronic keys. And their methods get cleverer all the time.
A few years ago, the devices criminals most commonly used were relay boxes. By placing one of these gadgets near the owner's home and another next to the targeted car, thieves can extend the signal from the key to the car, tricking the vehicle into thinking the device is in range and allowing criminals to open it.
Now the preferred method is an 'emulator', a fiendish gadget that – in just ten seconds – can duplicate the signal coming from the car and 'emulates' the key to give the thief total control.
Incredibly, these high-tech devices – often disguised as Nintendo Game Boy consoles – are still legal. They're available at sky-high prices of up to £5,000 online, where they are disingenuously marketed as handy aids for drivers who have lost their keys.
Not surprisingly, organised crime gangs are muscling in on this lucrative action, stealing cars to resell abroad where luxury brands are particularly popular.
And it seems that my model – the second-most stolen electric vehicle in the UK – is a particularly easy target. So much so that one unhappy owner – stunned when he saw CCTV footage of his car being stolen in fewer than 20 seconds – intends to file a claim against Hyundai for breach of the Consumer Rights Act.
While manufacturers say they are trying to deal with the problem, the attacks are so sophisticated that they are locked in an 'arms race' with the criminals. With academics having warned about the vulnerability of keyless systems as long ago as 2011, it's a race they were too late to start – and are comfortably losing.
As for the police, they also seem to be fighting a losing battle. Or in most cases no battle at all.
Recent data has shown that in 100 neighbourhoods in England and Wales last year, police failed to catch a single car thief. Of the 130,000 reported thefts, more than 100,000 went unsolved. Only 2 per cent led to a conviction. London's Metropolitan police has one of the worst records of all – with cases routinely closed within 24 hours and little apparent effort to catch those responsible.
All of which explains why, when my car became the latest addition to these grim statistics, I made the same decision as Mia Forbes Pirie and Mark Simpson, whose Jaguar E-Pace was stolen from outside their home in Brook Green, west London, last week. I decided to steal it back.
After the shock of not finding our car where we'd parked it – and after frantic calls to alert our insurers – my wife and I checked the Hyundai Bluelink app connecting our phones to the car.
Fortunately this software – which shows you basic information, such as how much the battery has charged – has a function that shows how many miles you have driven on any given day.
To our amazement, while we had been asleep, it showed that we had apparently taken the car for a 13-mile spin starting at 1.28am and finishing at 2.53am. We'd hit 70mph – pretty fast for the capital. All very interesting, but not much use for finding where it actually was.
But, soon enough, we found that another corner of the app provided a map of the car's location. We were flabbergasted. A little blue lollipop was showing the exact spot where our car was parked – between two small residential streets off the North Circular Road, next to Edmonton Federation Cemetery. My immediate reaction was to go and get it. After all, my wife needs the car for her work and we knew exactly where it was. And every second wasted gave the thieves the chance to move it on.
So, a little nervously, I recruited my 6ft-plus Glaswegian neighbour Jim, who has suffered two similar thefts himself in the past three years and who kindly – and bravely – agreed to escort me while my wife alerted the police to our mission in case anything went wrong. To the force's credit, it agreed to send an officer to meet us at the scene.
Thirty minutes later, we were walking into the estate to collect it. Fifteen minutes after that, I was driving my car – which only an hour previously I assumed was lost forever – back down the North Circular and heading into work as usual.
But, while I was grateful for the officers' reassuring presence at the scene, I didn't detect a huge amount of interest in actually catching anyone.
Writing my name in his pad, the officer did ask if there was anything suspicious in the vehicle that could be taken for evidence. But when I suggested that a plastic panel that had been removed from the dashboard and was lying on the floor might be worth fingerprinting, I was met with a nonchalant shake of the head.
Nor was there much interest in the expensive Mercedes parked behind us which also looked like it didn't belong. Instead, he recommended a steering lock.
Despite a few high-profile successes, as many as nine in ten car thefts in London go unsolved and cases are often closed in 24 hours. Perhaps I should be grateful that the stock case-closed letter breaking the 'disappointing' news that 'it is unlikely we will be able to identify those responsible' didn't arrive until three days later. As for the manufacturers, their response wasn't much better. After we stole our car back, there was little contrition from Hyundai that it could be so easily nicked. In fact, we had to spend £250 getting its wiring fixed.
For a further £100, we could get our cloned electronic key reprogrammed. However, while sympathetic, the man at the dealership said there was little point as the thieves could duplicate another one. It seems incredible that a stolen bank card can be so easily cancelled and yet the same disabling technology doesn't seem to be available for a £50,000 car.
Instead, our vehicle is now protected by a steering lock, plus two 'Faraday bags' that block the electronic signals from the keys when they are not in use.
With any luck, this may keep our car on our street for a little bit longer. But how long it does so is anyone's guess.
