If you are of a ‘certain age’ you will know exactly what a crook lock is. Everyone had one in the 80′s when car crime was at its height. At that time the car manufacturers were particularly bad at making their cars secure, so it was up to the owner to add something to make driving away as difficult as possible for the thief.
The crook lock is basically an arm that locks (hence the name) across the steering wheel making it impossible to sit in the car and rotate the wheel. Very low tech, but effective and cheap.
As cars got more secure the crook lock passed into folklore, cars became difficult to easily steal so the crime rate fell – until now it appears!
I gather that the ‘ultimate driving machine’ is now the target of thieves who use a simple device that plugs into the car and enables them to program a blank key and then drive off – in under 3 minutes! Now BMW don’t appear to have warned their dealers about this (it wouldn’t be good for sales after all!). So one assumes that they will be heading up some marketing of the crook lock to make it the must have extra for your next BMW!
Somehow I think if I had a £50,000 car which wasn’t anymore secure than cars in the 80′s I might be a tad cross?
