It usually takes a pro to steal it, but once a Mercedes-Benz S-class sedan is gone, its owner is unlikely to see the car again. The Highway Data Loss Institute (HDLI) recently released a study showing that the S-class has more than 10 times the average overall loss cost among passenger cars. Although they are stolen at a rate only slightly above the average, once purloined, the vehicles rarely are recovered, and their absence costs insurers a pretty penny.

"They're never recovered. They're not often taken on joyrides or sent to chop shops. When our cars are stolen, they're gone gone."

"We are a target for the ultra professionals who put [the cars] on a boat and send them overseas," says Fred Heiler, public relations manager at Mercedes-Benz Corp. "They're never recovered. They're not often taken on joyrides or sent to chop shops. When our cars are stolen, they're gone gone."

Although the S-class has a state-of-the-art security system, professional thieves know how to abscond with the vehicles. The cars usually are loaded onto flatbed trucks, loaded onto a ship, and taken abroad, says Kim Hazelbaker, HDLI senior vice president.

Cars are usually stolen from places where thieves are confident owners will not catch them on the job. "If you see someone driving into an airport long-term parking lot, you've learned a lot about that person, haven't you?" he says, describing the professional car theft rings' modus operandi. "The theft of new vehicles is not a chop shop operation. Vehicles are stolen to order and shipped overseas," often to the former Soviet Union or to South America, he explains.

The average car thief, however, would have a hard time stealing any recent-model Mercedes, since the cars are fit with a "smartkey" system instead of the traditional mechanical key. Smartkey uses a difficult-to-mimic infrared exchange of data to tell the car to start, says Heiler. The usual method of breaking the steering column and stealing the car is no longer mechanically possible.

"A two-bit car thief is simply not going to be successful," Heiler says. "It has to be a real pro."

Despite this, Mercedes-Benz Corp. has taken even greater measures to ensure that their cars cannot be stolen. Year 2000 models are fitted with an in-car tracking system. "That should make a dramatic difference," Heiler says. He explains that the system is activated only after the owner has reported the car stolen, so as not to invade a rightful driver's privacy. However, "as soon as the owner reports the theft, we take action and track the vehicle."

High losses caused by high prices

According to the HDLI study, next to the Mercedes S-class, the Acura Integra is the class with the second-highest losses, at 10 times the average. However, "these high overall losses are produced by different factors. The Mercedes has extremely high average loss payments per claim, while the Acura's claim frequency is very high," says Hazelbaker. The Integra is priced in the 20s.

Unlike the S-class, the Integra is usually stolen and sent to a chop shop to be resold for parts to people who are "upgrading" their Acuras, Hazelbaker notes. Honda, the manufacturer of Acuras, has equipped the 2000 Integra with a higher quality passive antitheft device in the hope of curbing the heavy losses.

Despite these high numbers, however, overall theft-claim frequency has declined considerably since 1980.