rb23lb

I am always concerned when I leave my car on the street in sketchy areas over night.

Worse nightmare would be to get my car stolen... I would lose all my mods which aren't insured and I would lose a baby I feel as though I have raised from inception and it would cost me a significant amount of time....

My question is, how hard is it to steal a w204 by hot wiring or starting the ignition without a key?

Is it even possible for the common thief?

I mean, I know that this is no Chevy truck or old Honda that a good thief can steal in a matter of seconds, but I have never heard anybody talk about getting "jacked" in these forums yet, so I figure it must be pretty difficult?

Would love for forum members to weigh in on this issue and provide any information on greater deterrents or mods that can be installed easily that decrease the risk of complete theft.

Besides rigging it up with one of these :


Or getting a lowjack...

Thanks in advance as always for your help and insight!

Knightmare69

Benz uses a chip in the key not to mention obviously the ignition is not your typical keyfob. I'd be more worried about anything removable in/on your car that might be stolen. Most thefts involving cars such as ours are usually done with the entire car being stolen via flatbed and then stripped at a remote location.

wyelit239

there is an app for that, sorry I could not resist

Garry1104

The club is pretty much useless. All it takes it's a hacksaw and 3 mins to cut the steering wheel to remove it. Saw someone did it live on a TV show.

Savage c-300

your mods should be covered by insurance by the way. at least with State Farm mine are.

Choy

Either they will take your 4 wheels or the whole car itself (via flatbed).

JimPap

Solution is to have a junk car that you take when you are in those sketchy areas overnight.

O.K.....gotta be asked....what are you doing in those sketchy areas overnight?

I am Jeff

It's quite easy to steal a W204...if they had a tow truck.

LILBENZ230

Do the 204s have the anti-tow feature of the 01-05 W203s? Not that it still couldn't be done, but anything to make it more difficult is a plus.

jctevere

I "believe" that there is a tow-alarm that goes off when the vehicle is locked and the car is put in a certain orientation (as in being pulled onto a flatbed). Early model c-class and clk had these (arguably entry-level) so I don't see why this alarm would have disappeared with the introduction of the w204...

Although, I do often rotate my own tires when the car is locked, and never had an alarm go off when jacking up a car. So maybe we don't have it (or maybe the car just knows its not being towed). However, I would have liked the alarm to also go off is someone was jacking my rims! Lol.

Ron Jr

If they are going to steal it they would most likely just flatbed it. Happened with my Porsche in the mid 80's right in my driveway.

rb23lb

cool, thanks for the responses guys... just needed verification that significant effort was needed (ie flatbad truck) to steal the car and that it couldnt be boosted in a matter of moments like my old Chevy silverado...

I figured that was the case, but just wanted some more information and insight...

AdidasC230

Ive seen custmers come in here with hacked IR keys and even had a guy who was a nerd who had his car programmed to trick the IR with just a palm pilot with IR and a piece of plastic. It can be done...will you average moron thief cant no, is it possible yes.


Also

Among the most sophisticated antitheft systems is the Bosch controller area network system, used on BMW, Mercedes-Benz and other brands, Folck said.

But thieves have increasingly found ways to defeat this system as well, using laptop computers that plug into the OBD II connector under the steering wheel to reprogram the vehicle's software. Who is smart enough to write pirate software to steal cars? Electrical engineers who are familiar with basic computer design, Folck said."

rb23lb

and Jim Pap, I highly agree with having a beater just for this reason

This is where I normally would bring my 1984 DL wagon (with HIDs and 4 15" subs and 200 pounds of dynamat )



But there are still those times I have occasionally in LA where I want to go somewhere non-sketch (ie DTLA, Silverlake) that is nearby the sketch areas and I have passengers with me that I don't want to put in the beater Volvo wagon....

and parking options in these 'near' sketch areas are usually only street parking overnight in unmonitored areas...

which in turn always puts me on edge or pisses off the Fiancé for having to roll out in the beater

jimmythegreek

There are a few ways to steal this car. the obvious is a flatbed or a tow truck, no brainer there. The w204 does NOT have a tow feature, I have played with both my Cs jacked up, on and off the lift, towed it myself, no alarm there. The key fob plugs into an actual box on the other side of the dash that u dont see. If a theif had a few minutes, he could rech under and unhook that box and plug in his own w his matching key to new module and start ur car. pretty easy. BUT ur alarm would go off gaining entry either breaking the window or jimmying it if the car is locked, alarm WILL sound. The theif could always cut your battery cable to disable that OR the horn under the front end then it would be just lights. All in all if you look at stats, its a very low percentage of old school hotwire jobs. Either someone copies your key while they have it or they trick u somehow(dealership scams) they have a machine that copies ur code in 1 sec at the dealer and im sure professional theives do too. I would bet 90% or higher are tow aways, so thats what u have to worry about in reality

JeffyPooh

As a general rule, it only requires *one* genius hacker to break into a system. Once the software or hardware solution is in the wild, then the moron thieves only need to press or click on the correct button.

RLE

W204 does not have a tow alarm (I think the term was Anti tow sensor). My W203 had one which had an off button on the dash. Any little wiggle could set it off and if a car had TeleAid, the alarm center in Texas would be notified automatically.

Once after boarding a ferry here, I thought I had disabled the motion detector with the dash button. As the boat pulled away from the dock, the alarm was set off which I didn't hear. What I did hear was an announcement on the ship's loudspeaker system "Will the owner of the black Mercedes on the car deck please come down and shut off the alarm." As I hustled down to do just that and as I opened the door, my cell rang, the caller from Texas asking if there was a problem before they called the cops. I said no and that the cops would have a hard time finding the car since it was a mile from shore by that time.

I was much more careful disarming the motion sensor after that episode.

dgghostkilla

SOUNDS TO ME LIKE SOMEONE IS LEADING A TRAIL OF EVIDENCE BEHIND, AS HE LEARNS TO STEAL W204S.

JaCe88

I think with my W204 I'm a lot less worried about it given that it's:
a) not that uncommon a car
b) not that expensive
c) the people who tend to buy it aren't typically interested in stolen parts/cars/etc

... I know this is all subjective and there are plenty of reasons to refute the above, but compared to my previous car (i.e. a modded Evo X MR), I feel significantly safer with this one.

Knightmare69

*insert Benz scene from Gone in 60 Seconds*

jctevere

Yeah, I don't think we really have an issue with our cars getting stolen. In fact, my father used to have a Civic for the train station, but after multiple break-ins, stolen radio, spoilers and attempted hot-wire, he decided enough was enough. He now takes his SL500 to the train station, the frequency of events has gone down. Between his 1998 SL (new at the time) and now 2005 SL500, nobody tries to steal it or break in.

Our logic (and is probably correct to assume) is that it is much harder to find buyers for these stolen parts than the average criminal has access to, and far to complicated to out-right steal for most thieves. The only issue we had was once coming back to his car and it laying on cinderblocks, stolen rims.

Luckily when we reported the incident, the cops in another precinct caught a guy in another train station breaking into a car, and in his van found our rims. We lucked out, but learned our lesson. Now use wheel locks. I think this is something we all face, and would definitely recommend wheel locks.

AdidasC230

Really? We have just explained how hard it is to do it, no one ever gave a real method to do it

rb23lb

hahhaha, ya nice one buddy...

Someone with over 1400 posts like me...

I am simply curious about the anti-theft devices that come stock with this car, as it is an asset of mine that I care significantly about...

and I have never seen a thread discussing it

acr2001

Just leave him be, he doesn't know what hes talking about. Also, CAPS LOCK MEANS YOU ARE YELLING.

On a side note, lots of the info in this thread is incorrect. For example, you cannot just remove the EIS as one post mentioned and replace it with a hacked version. There are other systems in the 'security chain' in the car which all check for authenticity. Furthermore, keys cannot be copied by any dealership. All new keys come preprogrammed from MBUSA only. Also, I understand that it is very hard to copy a key because there is a rolling code stored on it which changes each time the car is started with that key.

C300S 6MT

That's a pretty serious accusation...