Think I was followed in my RS6

[Cudd Wudd]

sunnyb13 said:

RZ1 said:

I thought a lot of the other high performance cars from the other manufacturers are AWD eg the bmw M140?

there was no awd m140i made for uk markets.

Presumably means current M135. As well as A45/35.

[JS1902]

rawenghey said:

Nope. It's a big city with simultaneously none of the redeeming features of a big city, but all the bad bits amplified by a few orders of magnitude

Absolute dump.

A single drive down the A45 through the Small Heath area will confirm this. Be warned, it will be an eye opener. The good, honest, professional folk who are left in the city are rapidly moving (or fleeing) to the likes of Tamworth, Lichfield etc. Soon, Birmingham will be 100% scrote and the government will have to just quarantine it off.

[dvshannow]

JS1902 said:

rawenghey said:

Nope. It's a big city with simultaneously none of the redeeming features of a big city, but all the bad bits amplified by a few orders of magnitude

Absolute dump.

A single drive down the A45 through the Small Heath area will confirm this. Be warned, it will be an eye opener. The good, honest, professional folk who are left in the city are rapidly moving (or fleeing) to the likes of Tamworth, Lichfield etc. Soon, Birmingham will be 100% scrote and the government will have to just quarantine it off.

Sounds like Compton on a larger scale and makes hs2 seem like even more of a waste of money

[anonymous-user]

I left work yesterday and followed a car for 15 miles until I turned off. Purely coincidental.

[Killboy]

LeighW said:

Then once inside, they plug into the OBD port, program their own key and they're away in minutes.

First thing I did was replace the ODB port with a fake, and wire the real one elsewhere. Loads of kits to do it. The fake even has power - so the device connecting just errors.

[Bannock]

I had a car stolen once, and used as a getaway car in an armed robbery. They didn't getaway, however, and were apprehended by the PoPo after driving into a field.

The car was a B-reg, burgundy coloured Ford Orion 1.6L. I'll let others make their own judgements as to the intelligence of the criminals in question.

[Fastchas]

GiantCardboardPlato said:

popeyewhite said:

andymc said:

they get stripped for parts, the days of ram raids are over.

It was explained to me that heavy AWD cars were liked especially because if cornered returning from a robbery they could smash through/past any blocking Police cars.

Wait till they hear about tractors.

No good - they generally only have one door.

[percymk4]

JS1902 said:

rawenghey said:

Nope. It's a big city with simultaneously none of the redeeming features of a big city, but all the bad bits amplified by a few orders of magnitude

Absolute dump.

A single drive down the A45 through the Small Heath area will confirm this. Be warned, it will be an eye opener. The good, honest, professional folk who are left in the city are rapidly moving (or fleeing) to the likes of Tamworth, Lichfield etc. Soon, Birmingham will be 100% scrote and the government will have to just quarantine it off.

Definitely this.
I work just off the M42, but to the East of Birmingham, have done for over a decade now, and I can count the amount of times I've been into the city on one hand. It's a pure sthole. I've lived in most big cities in the UK and it's by far the worst.

Driving standards are comically bad, and in the areas around where you mentioned, where there isn't shop stalls spilling out onto the pavement, cars are often just "parked" (abandoned) on the pavements. There's no way I'd own anything like an RS6 if I lived around here. I had an FK8 Type R for a couple of years and that was bad enough.

Used to live around Solihull and that was bad enough, moved 45 minutes East a few years ago and it's much nicer.

To the OP, it's not fair and shouldn't be the case, but I'd sell it and get something more discreet. It's not worth the hassle.

[dvshannow]

Killboy said:

LeighW said:

Then once inside, they plug into the OBD port, program their own key and they're away in minutes.

First thing I did was replace the ODB port with a fake, and wire the real one elsewhere. Loads of kits to do it. The fake even has power - so the device connecting just errors.

Fact this is considered necessary is a big failing by auto companies - should be possible to have secure keys with todays encryption tech

[DaveCWK]

If this is something you genuinely have to worry about, I think it's time to move areas.

[sunnyb13]

DaveCWK said:

If this is something you genuinely have to worry about, I think it's time to move areas.

moving areas wont help. theives simply target 'nicer' neighbourhoods where there are better cars available to steal.

[EmilA]

I had my RS6 stolen in Oct '21 from Solihull, bunch of guys broke into the house and took the keys. RS6 found a few hours later parked up in Moseley. I took it as a fairly random attack, was footage of them going up to an S3 half a mile away about 30 minutes before stealing my car.

OP, best thing you can do is prevention. Don't let the scum ruin what you can and can't enjoy, but if your still concerned maybe its best to sell the car on. I had the car repaired and returned but sadly due to it being remapped and brought as an AUC car, it was returned back to the supplying dealer, otherwise I would still own it.

One of the officers from a car theft team said it would have been used to steal from cashpoints, post offices etc. They all got caught in the end, story below. It make sense why they are used for these reasons, they are insanely capable cars.

https://www.birminghamworld.uk/nationalworldtv/new...

[Limpet]

EmilA said:

I had my RS6 stolen in Oct '21 from Solihull, bunch of guys broke into the house and took the keys. RS6 found a few hours later parked up in Moseley. I took it as a fairly random attack, was footage of them going up to an S3 half a mile away about 30 minutes before stealing my car.

OP, best thing you can do is prevention. Don't let the scum ruin what you can and can't enjoy, but if your still concerned maybe its best to sell the car on. I had the car repaired and returned but sadly due to it being remapped and brought as an AUC car, it was returned back to the supplying dealer, otherwise I would still own it.

One of the officers from a car theft team said it would have been used to steal from cashpoints, post offices etc. They all got caught in the end, story below. It make sense why they are used for these reasons, they are insanely capable cars.

https://www.birminghamworld.uk/nationalworldtv/new...

Boils my blood that the people involved are so well known to the criminal justice system, and have such an exorbitant number of previous offences, yet just continue seemingly in the knowledge that the reward far outweighs any potential consequences.

We need the three strikes and out rule, and we need it rigidly enforced. When caught for the second time, a clear warning that being caught for a third time will carry a mandatory draconian prison sentence (25 years). And stick to it. Get these scum off the streets.

[LeighW]

JS1902 said:

A single drive down the A45 through the Small Heath area will confirm this. Be warned, it will be an eye opener. The good, honest, professional folk who are left in the city are rapidly moving (or fleeing) to the likes of Tamworth, Lichfield etc. Soon, Birmingham will be 100% scrote and the government will have to just quarantine it off.

I had to drive into Balsall Heath last year to visit a rechromers. Christ, I've never been so glad to be back on the M42...

[Dog Star]

Limpet said:

Blimey, and we used to moan about kids punching a screwdriver through the door skin next to the lock barrel to get to the door locking mechanism.

I think if people are prepared to go to the lengths of cutting holes in panels with (presumably) a cordless grinder and hacking the car via the CANbus, you probably ain't stopping them stealing your car.

The problem is that even if you were to have gone to the lengths of, say, rerouting the canbus cable in the boot lid so a hole there wouldn't access it, or moving your OBD port, by this time the scrotes have already done the damage and you're into an insurance claim. So you've had a claim, lost your excess and NCD. Wouldn't have made any difference if they'd actually nicked the bloody thing.

[Court_S]

LeighW said:

If it's the same as the RR Sport, they just cut a nice hole in the tailgate, access one wire for the CAN Bus system, disable everything and unlock the car. Then once inside, they plug into the OBD port, program their own key and they're away in minutes. No noise, no fuss. This is a mate's car that was stolen just over a week ago. After a short chase with the police, they abandoned it and scarpered. If he hadn't had an additional aftermarket tracker fitted it would probably never have been found - he now realises why the insurance insisted on it. He has a young child, and is in two minds whether or not to keep the car now.

Edit to add - this was in Tamworth.

Edited by LeighW on Monday 3rd April 15:28

It was just outside Tamworth that I interrupted two scum suckers trying to get my M140i, in broad daylight parked on the side of a busy road. It was not far from a house where a lady was carjacked at knife point after pulling up on her drive at night in a Golf R.

There were lots of stories of M140i’s being stolen on BabyBMW.

The mum of a colleague I used to work with had her Golf GTI stolen in Tamworth.

Equally there are loads of uninteresting and frankly st cars that get stolen too.

[Court_S]

andymc said:

they get stripped for parts, the days of ram raids are over.

There was that video doing the rounds a while ago of the M2 that was nicked from Southampton. It was fitted with a tracker and located shortly after on a ropey old industrial in Birmingham. There wasn’t much left other than the shell if I recall.

My wife’s uncle who had his RRS nicked was paid out by the insurance and a few weeks later the car was found in a shipping container heading to the Middle East.

[EmilA]

Funny how the areas populated by ethic minorities are being brought up..

Truth be told every large city has an area or areas that are best avoided for various reasons. You can take a situation that is witnessed in Small Heath and the same happens in London, Manchester, Liverpool etc

I read some posts that the police don't care, yet clearly they do as they broke a theft gang up. The craziest part is some of the offenders would have been 14/15 at the time. The question i led with is where are their parents? The "men" arrested, they were not Asian and going off memory did not live in Small Heath or Balsall Heath.

[stevemcs]

Court_S said:

There was that video doing the rounds a while ago of the M2 that was nicked from Southampton. It was fitted with a tracker and located shortly after on a ropey old industrial in Birmingham. There wasn’t much left other than the shell if I recall.

My wife’s uncle who had his RRS nicked was paid out by the insurance and a few weeks later the car was found in a shipping container heading to the Middle East.

Possibly the Automatrics one on youtube

[RonnieHotdogs]

EmilA said:

Funny how the areas populated by ethic minorities are being brought up..

Truth be told every large city has an area or areas that are best avoided for various reasons. You can take a situation that is witnessed in Small Heath and the same happens in London, Manchester, Liverpool etc

I read some posts that the police don't care, yet clearly they do as they broke a theft gang up. The craziest part is some of the offenders would have been 14/15 at the time. The question i led with is where are their parents? The "men" arrested, they were not Asian and going off memory did not live in Small Heath or Balsall Heath.

The level of scumbaggery in Small Heath has nothing to do with ethnicity. Trust me, I worked there for four long, painful years.

People of any skin colour / ethnicity would quite happily drive at you / shout abuse at you at any time.

A girl who worked at the same place as me once parked her Fiat 500 on a clear, open road outside work as there were lorries manoeuvring around outside the neighbouring business (which I swear was also a chop shop due to the number of crashed cars always parked outside) and she would've been late for work. Went back for it 15 mins later and it had been nicked. This was 9am on a weekday in broad daylight.

Absolute and total dive, you honestly couldn't pay me to go back through Small Heath. I've been threatened whilst minding my own business too many times just trying to get some lunch at Asda or KFC ... and myself and other friends have had people get out of cars to have a go at us because we couldn't move our cars in the standard stationary traffic while they were trying to drive on the wrong side of the road.