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Cars are a frequent target for crime. That can include anything from the outright theft of a vehicle to having the catalytic converter stolen to harvest the expensive metals contained within. As such, it’s no surprise that people track these metrics to see just how common it is and, more importantly, which cars get targeted most often. This can have a huge impact on a shopper’s mindset when buying a car. People really don’t like having their cars stolen, and some will take theft frequency into account when buying one.

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After all, it was quite difficult to recommend a Kia or Hyundai at the height of the Kia Boyz trend, during which people were breaking into cars and stealing them with little more than a USB stick or charging cable. Kia and Hyundai eventually fixed those issues, but it still didn’t rub people the right way to see those vehicles being stolen on TikTok and other platforms so easily. As automakers and thieves dance around each other, the list of the most-stolen cars changes yearly, and it’s worth keeping up with. 

So with all that in mind, here are the most stolen cars in the U.S. in all of 2024. The data is sourced from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), which it gets from a variety of sources. While vehicle theft will always be a concern, there is some good news — vehicle thefts fell 17% from their all-time highs in 2023, a trend we hope continues into 2025. 

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The Dodge Charger is still somehow on the list of the most stolen cars despite the fact that Dodge doesn’t actually sell them in their old form anymore. Unfortunately, Dodge Chargers have long been a target for car thieves, having been at or towards the top of the list for most of the last decade. The car fell off the top 10 list in 2023, mostly because of the Kia Boyz car theft trend. Typically, the Dodge Challenger also adorns these lists but managed to stay off of it this year. 

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For the most part, the reason Chargers get stolen is the same reason most cars get stolen. Key fobs are becoming increasingly easy to clone, and existing Chargers are susceptible to it. In addition, the cars having those desirable Dodge Hemi engines certainly doesn’t help matters, and the cars are easy to roll away by hand once thieves put them in neutral. That’s all there really is to it. Sweet engines and easy break-ins cause cars to get stolen. 

It is nice to see the Charger falling down the list, though. In 2022, the Charger SRT Hellcat was 60 times more likely to get stolen versus any other individual vehicle model in the auto industry. Even so, as the Charger ages out, it’ll eventually fall from the list entirely. Hopefully, the Charger EV is a little harder to steal.

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The venerable Toyota Camry made it to this year’s list of the most stolen cars in the U.S. in 2024. Much like the Charger, the Camry wasn’t on the 2023 list, mostly due to the Kia Boyz. However, it frequently adorns the list dating back many years. Per Motor Trend, the Camry does buck a trend that we’ll see in other vehicles on the list in that the most stolen models are within the last decade. That means modern anti-theft systems have done very little to dissuade thieves from taking one out of a parking lot. 

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The biggest reason why the Camry is stolen so often is because there are so many of them. It has been the highest-selling passenger car in America for the last two decades, and thanks to Toyota’s generally good reliability, many of them are still on the road today. Since it’s generally understood that most car thefts are crimes of opportunity, the fact that there are so many of these cars on the streets is arguably the biggest reason why so many get stolen. Pair that with the aging and less effective anti-theft security on older models, and you have a recipe for making this list. 

For owners, there is some good news. The Camry was stolen a hair over 12,000 times in 2024, which is down from the 16,915 that were stolen in 2019. Thus, the stolen Camry is becoming less problematic than it was a few years ago. 

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The Ford F-150 is America’s most popular truck, so it’s not a total shock to see it on the list. After all, much like the Camry, there are just so many of them out there. Unlike the Camry, however, the most commonly stolen Ford F-150 models tend to be older rather than newer, so Ford has done a better job of protecting its trucks than it used to. Multiple reports indicate that the 2006 Ford F-150 is the most stolen model year, with newer trucks being much further down the list. 

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The F-150 shares the Camry’s role as being the most popular vehicle in its class, so that’s one contributing factor to why so many of them go missing. It doesn’t help that thieves have a dedicated gadget for this vehicle. It allegedly plugs into the OBD2 port and tricks the truck into believing that a new key was programmed. This takes only a few minutes to do, and then the thief is driving away in your trusty old pickup truck. Since older trucks are easier to break into, that means thieves can do it undetected, which adds to the issue. 

The good news for Ford owners is that Ford F-150 thefts are down from a few years ago. There were 12,952 Ford F-150s stolen in 2024, which is way down from the nearly 50,000 that were going missing just a couple of years ago. In fact, that’s even down from its 2019 and earlier numbers, when about 35,000 F-series trucks were stolen per year on average. 

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The Kia Soul is a relatively new entrant on the list. It was on the 2023 most stolen cars list but wasn’t on any prior year’s that we could find. Thus, we find ourselves with the first car on the list that is almost certainly here strictly because of the rash of Kia and Hyundai thefts that happened over the last couple of years. It’s a shame, too, since the Kia Soul is one of the more reliable SUVs on the market, and its distinctive styling makes it stick out in a parking lot. 

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So, if you’re unfamiliar with the Kia Boyz thing, here’s what happened. A bunch of viral videos started going around social media of people breaking into Kia and Hyundai vehicles with basically just a charging cable. This became an unfortunate trend on the Internet. The reason why the Soul was hit pretty hard is because Kia failed to put immobilizers in many of its vehicles sold in the U.S. from 2011 to 2022, which made them much easier to steal. 

There are two sets of good news for Kia Soul owners. The first is that all newer model years have immobilizers now, so you don’t have to worry about having your car stolen as easily. Secondly, Kia and Hyundai will update the car software and add an ignition protector to help prevent future theft. So, if you own one, reach out to your nearest Kia dealer about that, and maybe this car won’t be on the list next year. 

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The Honda Civic has been featured on these unfortunate lists for many years. In fact, between 2010 and 2020, the Civic was the second-most stolen car in the U.S., with only the Honda Accord doing better — or in this case, worse — numbers. The small car has been rather successful for Honda over the years, with the brand moving 15 million of them in North America between 1973 and 2025. You can probably guess where this is going, as it seems to be the same story for many vehicles. 

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That’s right — the Honda Civic is popular, and there are plenty of older models still roaming the streets, making it a prime target for car thieves. You can take everything about the Camry and Ford F-150 and basically apply it to the Civic, too. There are a ton of them, there’s a high demand for parts, and older models are reasonably easy to break into. In some cases, thieves may not even steal the whole car. Sometimes just the airbag is enough. Yes, that is a real phenomenon that started happening in 2024. 

There are likely some other reasons as well, but none of them have the impact of the popularity of the car and need for parts in the underground market. For example, the Civic is a popular car for street racers. There is good news, though. The Civic is lower on the list in 2024 than it has been in prior years, indicating that thefts are on the decline for the popular small sedan. 

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The Kia Optima is much like the Kia Soul in that it wasn’t featured on lists like these until the Kia and Hyundai thefts became a trend. In fact, between 2010 and 2020, it didn’t even crack the top 10 most stolen vehicles across the entire decade. In 2024, however, a little over 17,000 Optima cars were taken off the streets. That’s doubly surprising considering that Kia replaced the Optima with the Kia K5 in the 2021 model year, so it’s been a while since Kia even made an Optima. 

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The Optima was in a unique position to be stolen as many times as it was. The Kia and Hyundai fiasco was easily the biggest reason, considering that the car didn’t even appear on these lists until that happened. Every Optima is older, so it makes sense why so many were taken. Add to the fact that the Optima outsold other Kia vehicles like the Sportage in the 2010s, and you can see why this Kia made the list and not the others. 

The Optima was among the vehicles that received a security software update from Kia in the wake of the theft scandal. However, there are mixed reports online about whether the software actually prevents thefts, as we were able to find many first-person accounts of Optimas still being stolen anyway. The good news is that Optima thefts have dropped by nearly half since 2023 as owners take more precautions to keep their cars safer. 

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The Honda Accord is a regular companion of the Honda Civic on most of these lists. It was the most stolen vehicle of the 2010s, with over half a million thefts over a 10-year span. In fact, we went back as far as we could, and the Honda Accord has always been in the top 10 most stolen cars of any given year that we could find. In short, criminals apparently really like to steal these cars, regardless of which generation it is. 

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There appears to be a lot of reasons for this. For starters, the Accord is right up there with the Toyota Camry in terms of both popularity and reliability, so there are tons of them on the streets. Pair that with older models lacking modern anti-theft technology, a demand for black market parts, and the usual array of reasons, and the Accord is among the perfect marks for car thieves. There isn’t much else to say. The Accord is the poster child for car theft. 

There is some light on the horizon. Accord theft numbers are down year over year with nearly 2,000 fewer thefts than in 2023. That’s not nearly as big of a drop as the Kia Optima but any drop is a good thing. The bad news is that the Accord is now part of a wheel theft epidemic where thieves leave the car but steal the rims and tires. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the old saying goes. 

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The Chevy Silverado 1500 joins the Honda Accord as one of the most stolen vehicles of the last two decades. Full-size Chevrolet pickups placed fourth on the list of most stolen cars from the 2010s, with over 300,000 models stolen in that time. The only truck series that was stolen more often over the same time span was full-size Ford pickups. We’re not entirely certain why the bowtie automaker beat its blue oval counterpart this year and last year, as the F-150 tends to get stolen more often, but it currently leads its competitor in stolen vehicles in the 2020s. 

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For the most part, popularity is still a prime reason, but the Silverado has other factors as well. The Silverado has an OnStar system built-in that can usually track the car in case of theft. However, thieves figured out a way to bypass the OnStar tracking, making even newer models a little more susceptible to theft. By disabling the OnStar network connection, owners can’t track their cars or access the system at all. The resulting technology that allows thieves to bypass OnStar allows them to steal the car in minutes. 

The issue seems to have reached a fever pitch in 2022, as the Silverado was the most stolen vehicle of that year with nearly 50,000 thefts. At just 21,666 in 2024, the number of stolen vehicles has dropped by over 50%. There doesn’t appear to be a big reason for this outside of better collaboration between the NICB, law enforcement, automakers, and people doing a better job of protecting their vehicles. 

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The whole Hyundai and Kia theft controversy was dubbed the Kia Boyz, but as you can plainly see, the trend took a much heavier toll on Hyundai vehicles than Kia. The Hyundai Sonata is the Korean automaker’s spiritual twin to the Kia K5. Unlike the K5, which was born in 2021 in the ashes of the Kia Optima, the Sonata came out in 1986, and it didn’t receive the benefit of a name change like the Optima did with the K5. 

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As such, the Sonata was made for every model year affected by the break-in trend. That is your best answer for why these have been stolen so often. It was also much more popular than the Optima. Kia sold a little over 100,000 Optimas per year for much of the 2010s, while the Sonata saw some years where it topped 200,000 in sales. This means that the Sonata is on this list for exactly the same reason as the Kia Optima, but a higher popularity means more targets. In terms of method, it was the same USB cable method that plagued all of the Hyundai and Kia vehicles. 

Much like Kia, Hyundai fixed the theft vulnerabilities for free, so owners of a Sonata should reach out to their local Hyundai dealership and set that up if they haven’t already. The good news is many owners have already done so and while the fixes may not be the most amazing thing in car security, numbers of stolen Sonatas dropped from 42,800 in 2023 to 26,720 in 2024, so it has worked for some folks. 

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We’ve come to the most stolen vehicle of 2024 — the Hyundai Elantra. There isn’t much to add that hasn’t already been said so far. The Elantra wasn’t even on the radar in the 2010s and was not a common target for thefts during that time. With the Kia Boyz trend, the Elantra leapt to the top of the list where it’s been ever since. It also topped the list in 2023 with over 48,000 cars stolen. That’s more Elantras than were stolen in the entirety of the 2010s. 

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You know the reasons, so we won’t spend a lot of time going over them too much. Anyone with a social media account can start the car with a USB cable and drive it away while TikToking or Snapchatting their crimes. The real mystery is why. Hyundai has sold loads of Elantra models, but the Sonata has historically been more popular. So, this is the first instance of a less popular Kia or Hyundai model getting a higher spot, and we couldn’t figure out why.

Now that Kia and Hyundai have rolled out fixes to their lack of immobilizers, we should see Hyundai and Kia numbers lessen over the next couple of years. That’s already happening with the Elantra. At 31,000 thefts in 2024, it’s already down a fair bit from the 48,445 thefts experienced by Elantra owners in 2023. With overall thefts down 17% from 2023, perhaps we’re set for another big drop when 2026 rolls around as well. 

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