Illegal market values and break-in times among common and rare cares are non-normally distributed.
I use break-in times as a proxy for overall handling costs h i.
Twenty three cars (~19%) have break-in times under 15 seconds.
Figure 4 Break-in times for UK make-models measured by the "WhatCar?" Security Supertest in 2000 and 2003.
However, a range of break-in times characterize the vehicles that did not pass the test (Table 2).
It is not possible therefore to map break-in times from the Security Supertests directly to car types stolen in the US using the UK data.
Frequency histograms of the break-in times for (B) GM-, Daimler-Chrysler and Ford-group cars and (C) all other car types.
The aggregated results from 2000 and 2003, excluding those cars that passed the test, show a weak, but significant relationship between break-in times and market price in US Dollars (r2 =.258, p <.001) (Figure 4A).
Indeed, cars marketed by other manufacturers show a significant skew towards shorter break-in times and, by implication, lower handling costs for thieves Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z == 1.349, p = 0.053) (Figure 4B,C).
Low and high-mid market cars sold under the Chrysler brand (e.g., Neon, Grand Voyager) have minimum break-in times of between four and six seconds, while one low-market GM car sold under the Vauxhall brand had a brake-in time of two seconds.
"The biggest problem for an intermediate going with an upper-end skate is the break-in time," said Scott Noble, the author of the book "Hockey for Weekend Warriors".
