42 replies to this topic

[minijules]

TBF he said "places LIKE Poland" not Poland, and JUST Poland!

[minirage]

Alot of cars (mainly classics) are stolen and shipped out the country mainly places like poland as their worth more and easy to ring and convert they love cars like land rovers as also easy to convert and ring

And you are basing this on? If this is an article you have read please send me the link. It is impossible to register a right hand drive car in Poland, hence the price of right hand drive cars is considerably lower. The Mini scene is small with the exception of one or two suppliers who don't deal in second hand parts.

If you were to do the conversion it would cost you for and engineers report, a inspection similar to the SVA and inflated registration cost, that's before you get robbed by the insurance company for having a car that wasn't as it left the factory, even though they were available in left hand drive. I went through all of this with my other classic car which I brought with me from the UK. The only exception is if you can have the car registered as a historic vehicle, again a long drawn out process. Just because your car is a certain age doesn't qualify it for historical status, it's down to the engineer who inspects it. So in all a lot of hassle and expense.

I keep a regular eye on cars for sale, never seen more than a dozen at any given time and they take a long time to sell. Any that I have looked at have had a left hand drive vin number. Most of the Minis in Poland come from Germany and France and are prodominently late 80's onward.

I work with loads of polish guys who talk to me alot about what they 'can' get up to with things and loads of our stock has disapeared and be shipped out, plus their high interest in classic cars, bikes and landrovers, also that bull"£$% 2 grand scrap rubbish was just a way to get cars out the country, a scrap yard close to me (which now only has polish/russian signs) were cutting the cars up and boxing them in containers and shipping them out even though the cars were surpose to go through the crusher, I knnow these guys are just polish pikeys but cleaver enough to know best way to nick a car in england.....get it out the country

[minirage]

and as minijules said I said places LIKE poland! i.e romania, moldova, russia, ukraine

[Fatneil]

I sold a shell with no I.d and I know it wasn't stolen because it was mine haha

Its a tough call bungle.. Genuine peoples trade etc gets ruined by these scum.

A public 'something' needs to be done though

how do you know it was yours ?no book stolen 20 years ago! A shell with out papers is a knock off mate! Where did you get it from?

[ToM 2012]

i think its a good idea go for it. also i think we should all chip in get a mini leave it somewhere with a tracker on let them take it and then we can see where it goes to. and then we can get the mini back plus rob all hes stuff no point telling cops he will be out of the police station in an hour with a slapped wrist. has anyone got trackers on the minis?

[minirage]

i think its a good idea go for it. also i think we should all chip in get a mini leave it somewhere with a tracker on let them take it and then we can see where it goes to. and then we can get the mini back plus rob all hes stuff no point telling cops he will be out of the police station in an hour with a slapped wrist. has anyone got trackers on the minis?

track them down, beat and torture them with mini parts, im sure if the police released a photo of a thief with a rear cone up their ....... might put others off

[se_juggles]

Probably not... to be honest considering any mini with a inertia type starter motor I could get into and start within about 1 minutes I'm Suprised there isn't more stolen and scrapped.

Just ad a disclaimer: I do not, have not and will not, ever steel a mini or any other car. But minis are ridiculously easy to steal

[ToM 2012]

deffo going to have a tracker atleast ino where to go to find it. unless i find the tracker left where the mini was lol

[mini*mad]

I sold a shell with no I.d and I know it wasn't stolen because it was mine haha

Its a tough call bungle.. Genuine peoples trade etc gets ruined by these scum.

A public 'something' needs to be done though

how do you know it was yours ?no book stolen 20 years ago! A shell with out papers is a knock off mate! Where did you get it from?

I personally wouldnt buy a mini shell with no ID unless it was new heritage
ESPECIALLY from a legitamate seller called CONlad
haha!

[conlad]

I sold a shell with no I.d and I know it wasn't stolen because it was mine haha

Its a tough call bungle.. Genuine peoples trade etc gets ruined by these scum.

A public 'something' needs to be done though

how do you know it was yours ?no book stolen 20 years ago! A shell with out papers is a knock off mate! Where did you get it from?

I personally wouldnt buy a mini shell with no ID unless it was new heritage
ESPECIALLY from a legitamate seller called CONlad
haha!

Hahahah steady lads....

I sold it to a good mate and it was then used for grass tracking... Dont judge a book by its cover and jump to conclusions ey... The other shell I then bought was off a forum member highly regarded on here too.... I would never by a shell with NO i.d off a pikey from down the road... I think thats the impression people get as soon as someone sees a 're shell' or hears about it.. Dont be so pessimistic

EDIT: I knew it wasnt stolen because it has been on the road for ~25 years and was last MOT'd in 2008 and then it was in storage and then bought by me... Jesus man 21 questions here

Edited by conlad, 24 February 2013 - 11:26 AM.

[cityspeed]

We could always start marking our parts, with metal punches then painting over the area , If you did it to everything the thief would have alot of prep on their hands if they wanted to remove all of them,
there is also UV Pens (but i'm not sure how good they are at marking greasy stuff)

Cheap and cheerful but could make things easier when looking for stolen bits as auto jumbles,

[JacckKirk]

Best thing ive seen is a cheap gps phone left in the car hidden , charge it while u drive then if its stolen phone companies can track the phone hence finding your mini ... Just an idea

[Ben_O]

Anybody who steals a car is scum or steals anything for that matter. I have had one of my cars stolen in the past from a car park and all that was left behind was the pint glass they used to break the window. I had a lot of expensive audio equipment in the car which is why I now only ever have cheap cd radio head unit and standard speakers.

The feeling of having your car nicked is one of the worst I can imagine and when you have a call from the police as I did saying they found it and you get down there and its just a shell it makes you so angry that you feel like your gonna pass out.

 

I understand why these idiots steal mini's although I do in no way condone it but I just cant think of any way that you can stop it happening.

All the time us Mini owners have mini's we are always going to need parts and if you cant afford new then it has to be a scrap yard or eBay for second hand and that's the fact of the matter. you never imagine or question whether those parts may be stolen.

 

Alarms are no good really as how many times do you hear a car alarm going off in the street and go and investigate when your certain its not your alarm? Also steering locks and metrolocks and the like are no good, neither is an immobiliser as they just pick the car up with a hi-ab.

 

My mum broke down on a dual carriageway in the middle of the day a few years back. She had no breakdown cover so she called a friend to collect her. She left the car in the hard shoulder for 20 minutes while she went to get help with the hazards on and a note in the window explaining that she had broken down and when she returned, it was gone. Some people in a little chef opposite told her that some men in a lorry had reversed back up the hard shoulder and picked it up with a hi-ab.

The joke of it is that they had seen her leave it 20 mins earlier so knew it must have been dodgy but did nothing.

 

That's just the way things are these days i'm afraid.

 

Good luck with the list and what not. Anything that we can do, no matter how small, we should as a community of owners try to prevent this happening. I just don't know if there is anything short of either blocking the car in securing it in a garage that you can do to stop it.