A good car thief will have the door open, the car started, and inside
the chop shop with all the doors fenders cut off before somebody can
drive to the dealership and get a key made based on a VIN.


Aside: Most ingenious batch of car thieves in the last two decades, at
least in this area, had to be the group supposedly connected with the
"Russian Mafia." They specialized in stealing Hondas. They would steal
a car, strip the body and interior parts, and then roll the chassis
back out onto a local roadway and abandon it. The insurance companies
would pay off the owners of the cars, and then put the chassis up for
sale at the insurance salvage auction. The Russian gang would outbid
everybody for the chassis, obtain a legal title and bill of sale, and
then take the chassis back to the chop shop and reinstall all the
*original*, matcing VIN parts. They did a great number of cars before
getting caught.

Ironically, thier downfall (beyond doing something dastardly in the
first place) was using the original, matching parts. This probably
improved the ultimate resale value of the reassembled car, (as in, "I
don't know what they mean when calling this a rebuilt title- have your
body man look at it if you want, all the parts are original") When the
cops began to get wise and tracked down a few of the rebuilt cars
originally sold through the insurance auction, it didn't take a rocket
scientist to figure out the only person who would have all the original
parts for one of these stripped chassis would be the guy who did the
stripping in the first place.