Is stealing catalytic converters a thing?

[Esceptico]

According to my neighbour the catalytic converter from her (quite old) Prius was stolen yesterday early evening from outside of her house.

Anyone else come across this type of crime? Seems and odd thing to steal to me.

As an aside the thief must be mighty brave or mighty stupid because we live in a square with houses and flats all around so can't understand how they managed it without being seen.

[viggyp]

They've started stealing them again eh? Not heard this happen for a while I must admit.

[andymc]

loads! are there any caravans just landed?

[Ransoman]

They can be a lot of effort to get off sometimes,

I just scrapped the primary cats of my V6 alfa and the Cat from my 145 project. I got £80 just from those 3. They are worth more than the battery for scrap.

[neutral 3]

Scum cut the cat out of my old Disco a few years back.

[Warby80]

There was a video doing the rounds a month or so ago of a group of 4 masked men stopping traffic during the afternoon on a residential street while they quickly removed the Cat from a parked car. A Toyota of some sort iirc.

They are worth a few quid scrap…

Edit:

This is not the video i was thinking about, but shows how brazen they are…

https://youtu.be/ew62g5aWKhg

Edited by Warby80 on Thursday 4th April 15:14

[itcaptainslow]

We used to have big problems with commercial van cats going missing when I was in the trade-larger (so worth more) and easy to access. Only way to stop it was to park all vans in our workshop overnight!

Funnily enough, it used to be worse whenever there was a large infestation of “cavanning enthusiasts” nearby...

[sheepman]

itcaptainslow said:

We used to have big problems with commercial van cats going missing when I was in the trade-larger (so worth more) and easy to access. Only way to stop it was to park all vans in our workshop overnight!

Funnily enough, it used to be worse whenever there was a large infestation of “cavanning enthusiasts” nearby...

Around 6 years ago now, I did deliveries in a sprinter and the cat got stolen on that while I was away all of 15 mins doing a delivery in london.

[Robmarriott]

Prius ones are popular round here at the moment, 2 cats on them, if they're both original ones, they're worth a fair chunk of money for scrap.

Also, when I worked in Coventry a few years ago, the local van dealer had the whole forecourt done one night!

[Greg the Fish]

The Platinum in it isn't it?

[blue_haddock]

Robmarriott said:

Also, when I worked in Coventry a few years ago, the local van dealer had the whole forecourt done one night!

A dealer local to me a few years ago had a forecourt full of Mitsubishi L200's done in 1 night.

CCTV showed they did about 20 in an hour!

[T5R+]

How ironic a friend from the midlands was telling me a few days ago that he knew of 5x Prius that had them taken - one whilst the owner had gone into Halfords.

[lost in espace]

Saw a Prius the other day with stickers all over it "Cat removed".

[Sheepshanks]

Robmarriott said:

Prius ones are popular round here at the moment, 2 cats on them, if they're both original ones, they're worth a fair chunk of money for scrap.

I wonder what the environmental impact of having to make new cats is?

[MellowshipSlinky]

Mate of mine runs a used car dealership - anything from a few grand upto the odd one or two at £50-60k.
He had 10 or 11 of the cheap cars on the forecourt done one night.

[Cambs_Stuart]

Not for a while, but we've had cats stolen off the work vehicles. Also had the rear diff stolen from a transit.

[SilverHarrier]

I had to do a maintenance job at Maidstone hospital about 10 years back and 3 patient transport ambulances had the cats chopped out overnight. Think they were Mercedes Sprinters

[Tigger2050]

In 2018 I had a cat stolen from my car during the night, while it was parked on the drive. Garage said £2300 to repair.

Coincidentally, at the same time there were council posters on the lamp posts about legal action they were taking to move on travellers who had recently illegally camped in the area.

[texaxile]

Greg the Fish said:

The Platinum in it isn't it?

You mean "platinum, innit" surely?...

[shake n bake]

Definitely a thing, we had 6 nicked off a forecourt in one night!