Police warning after spike in Subaru thefts across Dunedin. November 4, 2026 Police issue urgent warning as Subaru thefts spike in Dunedin. Southern District Police have issued an urgent security alert following a steep rise in vehicle thefts targeting older Subaru models across Dunedin. Opportunistic car thieves have repeatedly targeted student suburbs, residential driveways, and unmonitored public parking lots over recent weeks. According to recent police alerts, offenders are exploiting specific mechanical weaknesses in older Japanese domestic market (JDM) imports. Authorities note that many recovered vehicles show significant structural damage, missing ignition assemblies, and evidence of dangerous joyriding. Investigators urge vehicle owners to secure their cars immediately using layered defenses. Without proactive measures, older Subarus remain among the most disproportionately stolen vehicles throughout the Otago region. Dunedin vehicle theft trends and vulnerability statistics. Police incident logs indicate that thieves focus heavily on Subarus manufactured between 1996 and 2008. The vast majority of these models entered New Zealand as used imports and were sold without factory-installed engine immobilizers. In suburban Dunedin areas such as North Dunedin, South Dunedin, and Mornington, multiple vehicles have been stolen in single-night sprees. Most stolen units are recovered within 48 to 72 hours, frequently abandoned in rural outskirts with collision damage or interior vandalism. | Subaru Model | Vulnerable Years | Primary Theft Method | Risk Level | | Subaru Legacy | 1998-2006 | Ignition barrel extraction / Screwdriver bypass | Critical | | Subaru Impreza | 1996-2007 | Door lock breach & quarter-light smash | Critical | | Subaru Forester | 1997-2008 | Forced mechanical ignition bypass | High | | Subaru Outback | 1999-2005 | Door frame prying & ignition hotwiring | Elevated | Why older Subarus are exploited by joyriders. The engineering of late-1990s and early-2000s Subarus makes them uniquely susceptible to rapid forced entry. Experienced car thieves can breach these models and start the engine in under 60 seconds using basic hand tools. Key design factors contributing to this heightened theft rate include: * Absence of Engine Immobilizers: Japanese domestic regulations did not mandate electronic chip transponders during this production era, allowing non-chipped duplicate keys or screwdrivers to turn the tumblers. * Frameless Window Design: The signature frameless side glass allows thieves to pry the window pane away from the weather stripping with minimal force to access interior lock tabs. * Soft Ignition Tumblers: The ignition lock housings degrade over time, making them easy to shear or bypass with brute-force mechanical tools. * High All-Wheel-Drive Performance: The turbocharged variants provide high speed and road stability, making them attractive targets for youth offenders involved in reckless driving. Anatomy of an opportunistic break-in. Auto-theft investigations demonstrate that vehicle thieves rarely spend extensive time planning individual strikes. Instead, they scan residential corridors looking for fast, low-friction targets. * Visual Reconnaissance: Thieves patrol dimly lit streets between 12:00 AM and 4:30 AM, specifically scanning for older station wagons and sedans. * Low-Noise Entry: Perpetrators push down on frameless windows or smash the rear quarter-light window to quietly unlock the vehicle cabin. * Ignition Stripping: The steering column cover is ripped away, exposing the ignition switch assembly and lock barrel. * Immediate Flight: Using a flat-blade tool or secondary wiring switch, the engine is engaged without triggering any factory sound alarm. Essential prevention tactics for high-risk owners. Because these vehicles lack electronic defense barriers, owners must create visible deterrence. Taking physical security precautions sharply reduces the probability of a break-in. * Install a Hardened Steering Lock: Brightly colored steering wheel locks create an immediate visual deterrent that forces thieves to move on to easier targets. * Fit an Aftermarket Immobilizer: Installing a certified immobilizer or hidden battery cut-off switch ensures fuel or ignition systems cannot engage without an external transponder. * Park Strategically: Position the car inside a secured garage, behind locked gates, or tightly boxed in behind a newer, immobilizer-equipped vehicle. * Utilize Security Lighting: Motion-sensor floodlights positioned above residential driveways remove the cover of darkness thieves rely on. Advanced recovery technology: the LoJack advantage. While deterrents lower opportunistic risk, dedicated tracking hardware is critical for recovering a vehicle after a breach. Rapid recovery often makes the difference between minor lock damage and a total loss write-off. For more than 35 years, LoJack has served as the global benchmark in automotive tracking and asset recovery. The platform delivers an industry-best recovery rate exceeding 90%, routinely returning vehicles within hours of an incident report. Unlike basic consumer telematics tags, LoJack utilizes deep integration engineered specifically for stolen vehicle recovery: * Proven Industry Legacy: More than three decades of specialized law enforcement collaboration and anti-theft development. * Exceptional Recovery Reliability: A documented 90%+ recovery rate that consistently protects asset equity for vehicle owners. * No Recurring Monthly Fees: Transparent ownership pricing that delivers long-term electronic protection without subscription fatigue. * Direct Law Enforcement Integration: Direct operational channels ensure officers can track and intercept stolen vehicles in real time. * Covert Placement: Hidden installation prevents thieves from locating and removing the tracking hardware before authorities deploy. Steps to take if your Subaru is stolen in Dunedin. If you discover your vehicle has been taken, immediate action maximizes the chance of safe recovery. Time is critical during the initial three hours following a theft. Protect your vehicle with LoJack. Industry-leading GPS stolen vehicle recovery with no monthly fees, free professional installation, and a 90%+ recovery rate backed by 35+ years of proven technology. | Plan | Price | Savings | / | | 7-Year Plan | $895 | Save $450 | BUY NOW | | 5-Year Plan | $795 | Save $400 | BUY NOW | | 3-Year Plan | $695 | Save $300 | BUY NOW | Free Installation · | No Monthly Fees · | $10,000 Theft Reimbursement · | Works with Law Enforcement * Call Emergency Services: Dial 111 immediately if the theft occurred recently, or lodge a report via 105 for historical incidents, providing your registration and VIN. * Activate GPS Tracking: If your vehicle carries telematics or LoJack hardware, trigger theft mode to stream location data directly to authorities. * Notify Your Insurer: Contact your insurance provider with your police event number to open an active claim file. * Check Local Neighborhood Footage: Ask neighbors for residential doorbell or CCTV footage facing the street to capture the time of departure and suspect descriptions. Protect your vehicle today. LoJack Direct offers industry-leading stolen vehicle recovery with no monthly fees. Choose from 3, 5, or 7-year plans starting at just $695.

The original Passport wasn't made by Honda: it was A thinly-veiled Isuzu SUV. Add SlashGear on Google: While the Honda brand doesn't have quite the same rugged, off-road-ready image as Japanese rivals like Toyota or even Subaru, the brand's current Honda Passport crossover has proven to punch well above its weight when it comes to off-road capability. The Passport may lack the body-on-frame construction you get in the Toyota 4Runner, or the symmetrical all-wheel-drive system that makes Subaru's CUVs so capable off the pavement, but the Passport - especially in its rugged TrailSport trim - has received lots of praise from drivers. With a naturally aspirated V6 engine under the hood, and Honda's i-VTM4 all-wheel-drive system providing traction, the Passport has won people over with its blend of real all-terrain capability with the on-road manners and smart packaging you expect from Honda's other models. The current iteration of the Passport is a relatively recent addition to the Honda lineup, having debuted for the 2019 model year, slotting above the CR-V but below the three-row Pilot in size - but the Honda Passport SUV has a history that goes back much further than that. The origins of the Passport actually stretch way back to the early 1990s, when Honda sold a rebadged Isuzu SUV bearing the Passport name. The original Passport came at a unique time in the partnership between Honda and Isuzu. An Isuzu with a Honda H. Before we can talk about the original Honda Passport, we have to talk about the Isuzu Rodeo - which is the SUV that the Passport was based on. Isuzu was always a small player in the American market, but the company deserves credit for being ahead of the curve during the SUV boom of the 1990s. A traditional, body-on-frame SUV that could be optioned with four-wheel drive, the Isuzu Rodeo arrived in the U.S. for the 1991 model year, where it competed against models like the Toyota 4Runner and the new Ford Explorer. In the early '90s, Honda's lineup didn't include any SUVs at all, and the debut of the Honda CR-V was still several years away. In order to broaden its lineup and attempt to capture a piece of this growing SUV market, Honda worked out a deal with Isuzu to sell the Rodeo at its U.S. dealerships under the Passport name. That's right, Honda's first SUV actually wasn't made by Honda at all. Among other names, the Rodeo was also sold as the Isuzu Wizard in Japan, and thanks to Isuzu's partnership with General Motors, the Chevrolet Rodeo in South America and the Holden Frontera in Australia. The Isuzu Rodeo would stick around in the U.S.market until 2004, when Isuzu's lineup had shifted to GM-based models like the Ascender SUV and the i-Series pickup. By 2008, Isuzu announced it was pulling out of the U.S. passenger car market completely. The Passport wasn't the only Isuzu-Honda collaboration. Notably, the original Passport wasn't the only U.S.-market product that was born of the Honda-Isuzu partnership. For example, when Acura wanted an entrant in the growing SUV market of the '90s, it used a rebadged Isuzu Trooper as the Acura SLX. Honda returned the favor by giving Isuzu dealers a rebadged version of the Honda Odyssey minivan known as the Isuzu Oasis, and in the Japanese market, Isuzu sold a version of the Honda Accord sedan badged as the Isuzu Aska. As for the Isuzu-based Honda Passport, it survived through two generations and until the 2002 model year, when the Honda-Isuzu partnership came to an end. By then, Honda not only had its own CR-V to offer customers, but also the new midsize Pilot, which replaced the Passport in the brand's lineup. In 2019, after a hiatus of over 15 years, Honda decided to bring back the Passport nameplate on its new two-row SUV based on the Pilot platform. Interestingly, Honda has yet to build its own dedicated body-on-frame SUV platform, but it may not need to. Given the strong niche it's established with the Pilot and Passport SUVs, as well as the Ridgeline pickup and the continued expansion of its TrailSport lineup, the company is showing it can do a whole lot without building a "real 4x4."

Automakers are investing in new US factories, but not Mazda. Published Oct 29, 2026, 2:20 PM EDT Tom started his career as a daily newspaper reporter in metro Detroit and after a decade changed course to cover cars, spending the next 25 years at Wards Automotive doing test drives, technology and supplier coverage, editing WardsAuto World magazine and managing the Wards 10 Best competitions for powertrains, then interiors, then the user experience. He became executive editor at Autoweek in 2022 and joined Valnet in 2025. At CarBuzz, he's returned to his roots: a reporter seeking out news and trends and telling stories, but with more experience. Tom's wife has been putting up with him since 1990, and they have two adult children. He runs half-marathons and plays guitar in a rock band with other Detroit auto writers, called the Exhaust Tones. It's been five years since the Mazda Toyota Manufacturing joint venture plant in Huntsville, Alabama, started production. This week, as both automakers celebrate production of the 1 millionth vehicle at the $2.3-billion facility, Carbuzz explore where the relationship between Toyota and Mazda is heading. The Huntsville event amounts to a victory lap for two vastly different Japanese automakers that fused two corporate cultures within Alabama's largest city to create jobs and expand local opportunities. But in an exclusive interview, CarBuzz learned Mazda isn't keen to grow its US operations despite the current climate that makes importing products a costly endeavor. Mazda wants to sell more cars in the US. The Huntsville plant can produce 300,000 vehicles annually on two shifts, or 150,000 for each automaker. Last year, MTM built nearly 136,000 Corolla Crosses and about 120,000 CX-50s. But Mazda overall has been growing, and the automaker's two best sales years in the US were 2024 (424,382 vehicles) and 2025 (410,346). After two solid years, Mazda North America CEO Tom Donnelly told CarBuzz this week that Mazda is on pace for "our best year ever" in 2026. "September was our best ever. October should be our best ever," he said. Donnelly has set his sights on achieving 500,000 annual US sales by 2030, but how Mazda grows beyond that raises questions about the need for new manufacturing capacity. US sales through September were 310,268, down 2.9% from 2025. Is Mazda willing to build US plants for more production? While some automakers are increasing investments in US manufacturing as a way to avoid tariffs on imported vehicles, Mazda is thinking differently, even without its own wholly-owned assembly plant in the US. Mazda's plant in Mexico produces the CX-30 for the US, but Mazda's other vehicles come from Japan, subjecting them to 15% US tariffs. That puts Mazda at a disadvantage in the US compared to rivals Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Subaru, which all have US factories. It appears Mazda is being cautious, as Donnelly said the 500,000-unit threshold can be reached in "an industry that's fairly stable," and that any growth must be "driving profitable volume." The partnership with Toyota in Alabama cuts Mazda's investment in half and diminishes risk while Mazda gains valuable manufacturing experience alongside Toyota. "Going in alone anymore is more and more challenging just because these are massive billion dollar investments... You're seeing more and more of that in terms of leaning into partnerships, not just us and Toyota, but across the industry." -Tom Donnelly, Mazda North America CEO, speaking to CarBuzz The Toyota partnership has been good for Mazda. In addition to the CX-50, Huntsville also launched a CX-50 Hybrid in December 2024, using Toyota's 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine, three electric motors, and a CVT. That new hybrid drivetrain makes up about 35% of CX-50 sales. The plant builds 1,200 vehicles per day, about 600 each on Toyota's "Apollo" assembly line and on Mazda's "Discovery" line. With 4,500 workers coming from a 75-mile radius, the plant has provided an economic stimulus for the region. CarBuzz insight - why this matters. Donnelly told CarBuzz the next-generation CX-50 will also come from Huntsville, but apparently it's too early to talk about other North American capacity. Tariffs forced Mazda last year to move Mazda3 production for the US from Mexico to Japan, while the CX-50 produced in Alabama is no longer available in Canada. That sort of explains why the two-row CX-70, assembled in Japan, will still go to Canada, even though it's being dropped for the US. While Mazda continues pushing US sales growth, having to eventually find a way to build more cars is "a good problem to have," an executive told Carbuzz. But even good problems are still problems that need solutions. And if the tariff situation doesn't improve, Mazda will need those solutions to realize its sales ambitions in the US.