Scirocco-l Digest, Vol 7, Issue 169

[Gretsch60s at aol.com (Gretsch60s@aol.com)]

In a message dated 9/30/05 6:34:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
scirocco-l-request@scirocco.org writes:

<<Discouragement is a good idea- send them down the
block, next parking lot to the next car and away from
yours. You are trying to accomplish two things, make
it worth less than the effort required and 'keeping
honest people honest'.? >>

<< So don't make it easy for someone to
consider _your_ car a target. >>

Exactly... I've done some stuff to my car to make it a little less flashy.  I 
took off my TSW Hock's because I felt like one too many kids were driving 
down the street at night (mostly shady looking Honda's).  I put on some RA's with 
black centers, and the drive-by's stopped after awile.  I figured that while 
they're a wheel that I love, that nobody else would, at least not near as much 
as the TSW's.  If these get stolen, I'm goin out lookin for another VW! =)  I 
also have gone to great lengths to keep my car free of clutter inside... it's 
less for them to think they can rummage through and find something.   The 
hope is that they'll see that there's nothing inside it and won't even bother.  I 
like my car's simple looking on the outside, so its mostly stock with the 
euro parts except for headlights.  Nothing that any thief (except a VW enth.) 
would want, and nothing that really gives the car away to your average passer by. 
 

I'm almost certain that they mistook my car for my girlfreinds, which I have 
installed a stereo system in and it can thump pretty loud.  It looks nearly 
the same as mine except for having euro headlamps and chome AR wheels instead of 
the black BBS's.  To the layman it's the same car.  A few days before this 
happened, I was using the old lady's rocco, and had some music playing pretty 
loud and thumping away in the back... I drove past quite a few different places 
where I might have gotten the attention of the thief, but I wasn't counting on 
them trying to steal anything, actually I was just trying to act cool and 
impress strangers. =)  That'll teach me to think! 

As far as alarms go, when I get one and if someone breaks into either of our 
Scirocco's again and it goes off, I'm pretty sure they'll start running.  I 
can't imagine anyone that would be trying to steal our cars (they're too old, 
and not THAT nice), and it's not worth hanging around digging around for a 
faceplate with all that attention directed at you.  It also helps that the system I 
did install into her car is totally stealth.  Inside the car every wire is 
hidden, and run along with stock wiring.  The only things you can see are the 
sub box in the rear with the amp mounted on it...  and thats only with the hatch 
open.  It's a nice clean installation, you can't see anything from outside 
the car except the headunit without a plate on it! =)  I plan on doing the same 
plus a few tricks with the alarms so they can't be dis-armed via cutting or 
anything like that.