I get it. I'm not wedded to the manual. The 6 speed manual was the only FJ model that came with full-time 4-wheel drive and the best off-road features. There are a few off-road situations that I like having a manual, but I'd have no problem buying an automatic.
I do like that it discourages people from jacking my vehicle.
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
Shabbat shalom, motherf***ers! --Mordechai Jefferson Carver
Last edited by Stephanie B; 01-20-2022 at 11:26 AM.
If we have to march off into the next world, let us walk there on the bodies of our enemies.
Most of the cars I've owned and spent my automotive career working on could be called 'high profile' or 'highly targeted' when it comes to thefts.
Targeted theft is a hell of a thing to protect against. Obvious physical security measures in layers are best. Ideally, a locked garage behind a locked gate with a locked car inside it with keys hidden away in the house somewhere.
Alarms are worthless unless they have specific kill switch features and a GPS enabled on a separate backup battery. Don't count on alarm noise to do anything useful beyond waking you up just in time to see your car disappearing around a corner.
Custom kill switches are only good if the thief doesn't have much time or is in a visible/crowded area. Otherwise a thief will just destroy that much more of your interior trying to find the kill switch.
All the other good best practices have been discussed. Always close your garage door, always lock your car, never store your keys close to your car, and always empty or hide your belongings in a car.
The best auto security systems I've seen feature multiple small cameras, essentially a combined dash camera system, with cameras front/rear as well as out either front door, that streams and/or cloud uploads the video whenever alarmed or told to. When set up properly, any bumping of the car, messing with door handles, etc would trigger a silent alarm that'd stream & upload the video while a lot of obvious cameras and bright red lights go on. This has a very good chance of getting a good quality image of the goon messing with your car and acts as a good deterrent.
This was all emerging tech when I got out of the industry in 2016, so I can't recommend a best setup or brand. But if I had a high value car that I'd be parking in public regularly, I'd be looking for a combined dash cam system with all of those features.
Other options are much more simple - common GPS devices like Apple air tags hidden in your car can be a wonderful backup for locating a stolen vehicle quickly. As any LEO working auto theft can tell you, that first 12-24hrs is critical if you want to find your car intact.
Examining your existing auto insurance coverage for what's covered in the event of a theft or attempted theft is time well spent. With attempted theft/auto burglary in particular, it's easy to end up in 'deductible hell' where your low rate/high coverage insurance's high $1000-2000 deductible is damn near what it'd cost to fix out of pocket. So it's best to price out broken window/damaged dash/damaged column sorts of issues on your particular car(s) so you can make informed decisions on deductibles.
Back when i was a youngster, i had a '59 TR3. One day it died a few blocks from home. Since it was down hill most of the way, i pushed/coasted home. Checked out the problem. Had spark but no fuel to the carbs. No fuel to the pump. Kept tracing the fuel line back. Fuel line goes back thru the firewall and emerger again under the hood. Hmmmmmmm. Looked under the dash and found the fuel line, complete with a shut off valve. It had somehow gotten bumped to off. Some previous owner had installed a very clever, although unsafe, anti theft device.
Targeted theft can be very difficult, because the vehicle can also be towed away, instead of driven away. I know a common MO for motorcycle theft is to lift a high end motorcycle into the back of a truck and drive off. A friend's bike was stolen from inside his fenced apartment complex, when thieves lifted the bike - over the fence - into a truck and drove off.
I can't think of how many tow trucks with seemingly normal vehicles on them I have seen. Especially higher end things. How many of those were auto thefts in progress? No idea. I see a Ferrari, an M4, or a Corvette on a wrecker and think, "Ha, it's broken." - But you know...is that really the case? The trouble is, high end cars have a venn diagram of theft targeting and broken-downess that overlaps quite a bit. It's not a circle, but it ain't two circles either...
Anyways, layers and layers and layers.
I like the idea of a dash camera system with multiple monitors.
We recently had a bunch of car thefts and break-in's in my area. The local news actually did a good job by sending a reporter to the two PD's involved. Every vehicle stolen or broken in to was unlocked, according to the police. Owners admitted to not locking the cars, and no evidence of forced entry was discovered at the scenes, or from vehicles already recovered.
#1. Lock your vehicles.
The fuel economy was the deciding point in going with an automatic for our last car purchase. I’ve always had manuals. That and each having had hip/leg issues in the last few years.
We got an auto with a manual mode and paddle shifters. It’s a reasonable compromise.
A lot of the driver-assist systems will only function fully with an automatic.