6 Series That's crazy! BMW 6 series carjacked at petrol station in Syndey.

[Yperion]

$210,000 BMW carjacked at petrol station

A 24-year-old BMW owner was in a state of shock after being carjacked by two armed men at a Sydney service station overnight.

The Kogarah Bay man had just driven his $210,000 BMW 6 Series convertible into the Budget Petrol service station at Lewisham when he was confronted by the balaclava-clad bandits about 11.15pm.

"Within half a minute he had two guys at him, one pointing a gun [and they] wrestled him to the ground, demanded the keys and just took off. Easy as that," said a service station attendant who was not on duty at the time but had seen CCTV footage of the carjacking.

"[The driver] just gets up off the floor and watches his car take off. He comes into the service station. He was just in a state of shock," the attendant, who asked not to be named, said.

The car was brand new and the driver was a regular customer at the petrol station, the attendant said.

The attendant on duty immediately pressed a panic button, which alerted police to the attack, he said.

Police set up a crime scene and spoke to a number of witnesses but are appealing for anyone else with information to come forward.
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There have been a spate of cajackings across Sydney over recent months - particularly for top-range, high-speed vehicles capable of outrunning police in a car chase.

A number of carjacked vehicles have been used as getaway cars following armed hold-ups and ram-raids where ATMs are stolen.

One of last night's carjackers was described to police as being 170-180 centimetres tall with thin to medium build. He was last seen wearing a black balaclava, blue hooded jumper with white lining, black pants and running shoes.

The other offender was wearing a black balaclava, blue jumper with a white vertical stripe on the sleeve, tan three-quarter length shorts and white shoes at the time of the incident.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national...n/2005/10/13/1128796621532.html?oneclick=true

 

[Zafiro]

hmm didnt the same thing happen to a SL65 owner in Sydney? same gang perhaps.

 

[Yperion]

hmm didnt the same thing happen to a SL65 owner in Sydney? same gang perhaps.

Perhaps Snake can tell us more but this is an awful incident.

 

[Snake Vargas]

Nah, this is news to me as well!

But these things have been getting on the news lately, whether that's just a factor of it becoming more newsworthy, or carjackings actually increasing, possibly as a factor of copycat criminals who realise that it's actually not that hard as such.

That really sux. What could he do? If the gun was real and the criminal willing to use it - which, in the heat of the moment you had best think so - better the car taken than being shot.

Prevention is better - go to larger (don't know what sort of petrol station it was, but Budget? Umm, doubt it's going to be large..) stations, at better locations, at more normal hours. That's about all you can do.

I was going to ask why a guy with a new 6er convertible was in a Budget petrol station anyway, but hey even owners of expensive cars like cheap petrol..

 

[Monster]

I drive pass Lewisham everyday, and it is not a suburb u want to be in while driving in an expensive BMW. There has been a wave of car jacking incidents in Sydney in the past 4-5 months, and the police still hasn't found out who the bastards were. They only target luxury cars. i think it all started when the gang 1st carjacked a black SL65 while the owner is driving from his garage. The car was later found competely torched. Within a week or 2, a guy was being followed back home and they took his SL55 AMG away. About 2 weeks after that, another SL55 owner noticed he was being followed by some strangers, so he drove like mad to the nearest police station. A few weeks have gone pass before the gang attack again, this time they track down the owner of a brand new Porsche 997. The owner return home one night and the group of bastards started to attack him. a few men punched and kicked him around while the owner was on the ground holding his keys. All of this was going on while one of the car jackers was pointing a gun at the owner's head. He pressed the alarm button, and they got scared away. But that didn't stop them from launching more carjacking. Just late last month, the gang carjacked a CLK 350, and now they got themselves a brand new 6 series.

I honestly can't believe all this is happening, and i hope the police will get off their arse and do something about it, because i lived near where they do all the carjacking and ram-raiding. I actually drove pass one of their ram-raiding crime scene. NRMA, Australia's largest insurance group, has warned the police about the increasing rate of carjacking, but as usual the police did nothing

 

[Alx]

This is for sure the same group, what a bunch of a-holes. I hope the police in Sydney are taking this more seriously, they aren't jacking Ford Festiva's here. This is getting extremely serious!

 

[Zafiro]

A Audi RS6+ was stolen here in Sweden and the police found the car today
See link: http://www.sos-stockholm.se/forum/showthread.php?t=466

the guys that stole the car visited the dealer during the day. One of the guys stole the key while the other one talked to the salesman and at night they went back to the dealer and stole the car.

 

[Alx]

JUST_ME... Thats crazy that happened... This whole theft thing is out of control. At least they quickly recovered the car... what the hell is going on in Sydney... are teh police in on it?

 

[Zafiro]

JUST_ME... Thats crazy that happened... This whole theft thing is out of control. At least they quickly recovered the car... what the hell is going on in Sydney... are teh police in on it?

you sell cars, right?
Are you careful when someone comes to buy a car?

 

[Alx]

Im not a sales person.... im the finance manager for the company. We have hundreds of cars ont he lot, never has that happened. Porters misplace keys, but never have a situation of people stealing keys.

 

[bmwrules]

There aren't many car jackings where I live but in some places in the USA there are tons of them and have been happening for years. I think one reason why that is happening is that with the increased use of immobilizers in cars, it is easier to car jack somebody than to steal the car.

 

[Alx]

Dont hear about any on the news nor online.

But all these are highline cars that are being stolen... it is amazing.

Here's a good story for you;

We were selling one of the owners' 2005 SL500's black/black at manheim auction in PA. The car still had the MSO (it wasnt titled) anyways, they ran it through and we didn't want to sell it, because it wasnt enough to cover the car, so the next week they were going to run it thru again, but they couldn't find the car. Their insurance compnay ended up paying full Invoice price for the car. As too what happened with the car no one knows? Its as if it mysteriously vanished! Crazy huh!

 

[warot]

I don't know much about these but... wouldn't these high end cars have GPS? And if so, wouldn't they be able to recover it quite easily (unless of course they are torched). This happened to my family when we were in Poland. We were highjacked at gunpoint... driver gave them the keys to the E-class... never to be seen again.

 

[Mark]

Don't they have a system like LoJack everywhere? A theft recovery system that gets activated after the car is stolen...
Even with GPS, one can break the antenna, or, the stolen car gets loaded in a truck with a built-in metal cage and dissapear from the GPS system.... that's when the LoJack system comes in the picture...

 

[Snake Vargas]

What sort of system is the LoJack based on? Radio waves? Or something else?

I think the existing satellite systems have the ignition cutout/disable function, but they tend to all say they "only use under police supervision" in case they're driving along a road with lots of traffic, etc. etc.

I'm not sure if it's that easy to disable the antenna at first, though. They'd surely have thought of that. If at least making only bypassable for thieves who know what they're doing.

 

[Mark]

Yes, radio waves. Here's the link to the LoJack site: http://www.lojack.com/

and the 'What is' section: http://www.lojack.com/what/index.cfm

The law enforcement are equipped with LoJack vehicle tracking units in their police cruisers and aviation units..

 

[Snake Vargas]

The patented LoJack System includes a small radio frequency transceiver hidden in up to 20 places in a your vehicle.

Ok, that's a good start - multiple transceivers in variable locations. However, of course it's still not foolproof (as usual). If they are careful enough, thieves could find all of them. The transceivers would likely have to have power going to them via wires. Also, radio waves might be able to penetrate various amounts of materials, but they can still be blocked. That can 'hide' the vehicle for a time to enable transportation or disarmament. There could be other ways, too.

Still, the main factor likely isn't that it's invincible, but that it's better. That means that petty thieves, joyriders and all but the most determined thieves will likely be stopped, and even those will have a harder time stealing the car and keeping it mobile after carjacking. Which is probably well worthwhile.

Unless they just kill the driver and take the keys. Nobody to raise the alarm.

 

[Alx]

lo jack is as best as you can get, but its not everywhere and doesnt work in all parts of the US let alone over seas....

 

[warot]

I don't think it would be easy to disable all those transmitters, unless of course you are a pro. I think these are supposed to safe guard you against amateurs. It's definitely something I would put in my car if I spent a lot on it.

 

[Yperion]

There are some thieves that are so experienced and familiar with hi tech safety systems than are capable of stealing practically any car.
They even had the car of Mercedes manager stolen:

Gone in 20 minutes: car chief’s bomb-proof limo

HE IS one of Europe’s most powerful businessmen and has a car to match — or at least he had.

The thief-proof, bomb-proof Mercedes of Jurgen Schrempp, the head of DaimlerChrysler, has been stolen from under his nose. Herr Schrempp’s £500,000 limousine with 5cm-thick steel plating, a landmine-resistant petrol tank and bullet-proof windows could drive on, even accelerate, after the tyres had been shot out or lacerated with spikes.

It was the most secure vehicle in the DaimlerChrysler range: a Mercedes S600 that weighs 3.5 tonnes and, according to police investigators in Stuttgart, is probably already serving some safety-conscious Russian entrepreneur. “This was almost certainly a contract theft,” one officer said.

The 60-year-old chief executive locked the car and left it for 20 minutes while he dashed into an evening business meeting in Stuttgart, the centre of DaimlerChrysler’s operations in Europe. He was travelling without a chauffeur or the customary bodyguard.

By the time he returned, a gang had overcome all the security systems, rolled the car on to a transporter and made their getaway. They also blocked the satellite navigation and tracking systems.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1370648,00.html