> I hope these security efforts don't lock legitimate owners out of access to their vehicles.
Well that's the thing with cars. Anything the legitimate owner can do because they have physical access, a thief can also do... and even if you force manufacturers to provide a "rooting mode" aka you enter some PIN that you get at purchase into the car's infotainment and it will relax restrictions on the CAN bus, now you open up the gates for thieves as well.
And on top of that come the actual reasons for the security theatre: people modifying their ECUs to tune up their engines for higher power or speed limiters in trucks than is stated in the vehicle papers (at least in Europe, if you tune your vehicle and don't have the papers updated you're in legit felony territory), doing shit mods like "rolling coal" or otherwise tampering with emission controls (say to avoid having to refill adblue)... governments really REALLY do not like this and so regulations get tightened ever closer.
All it takes to pwn a Volkswagen T4 from the mid-90s is to rake the lock, pry open or smash the door, and then about half a minute to hot-wire three pins on the ignition switch (one for the main power and one for the starter motor), although I think that you should be able to motor-rake the ignition switch as well.
Source: owned and heavily worked on one for a few years. Reliable as fuck but thank god Europe doesn't have much of a "joyride" scene.
62 fairlane, I'd welcome the attempt. If they somehow manage to both prime the fuel pump and trick the carb into introducing enough fuel into the engine to get it to start before the battery's stone dead I'd pay a princely sum for live video of them trying to figure out where first gear is while getting a rude introduction to purely mechanical steering. Given what I paid for it, I could have 6-10 of it stolen before I'm in the neighborhood of sticker on a "cheap" new car.
And column shifters still exist- hell, even the Tesla Model 3 has one- so any gen z kid who knows how a manual transmission works can shift it into gear.
I am quite certain that getting this vehicle started and out of it's parking space is fraught in ways that beggar belief for anyone who hasn't spent a significant portion of their life dealing with the vagaries of shitty vintage project cars, and even then this one's got several tricks up her sleeve that the initiated won't see coming. Think three on the tree, on the floor, with more than one wildly out of place barrier preventing straightforward movement through the shift pattern. Getting this thing in first is less like shifting a car and more like picking an oldschool lock with ward plates. Then there's the combination of dodgy battery and mulish fuel delivery system to contend with. The only person I've ever met who can consistently get this thing to crank cold is the lunatic that chopped out the aftermarket electric fuel pump and replaced it with an OEM mechanical pump out of sheer perversity. Equipment? Hell I could leave the key in the ignition and a sign in a window DARING someone to try and I still like my odds.
2000-2005 is the sweet spot. Cars had immobilizers but not keyless entry. Basic electronics: airbags, electric windows, radio. Engines were naturally aspirated with port injection.
Well that's the thing with cars. Anything the legitimate owner can do because they have physical access, a thief can also do... and even if you force manufacturers to provide a "rooting mode" aka you enter some PIN that you get at purchase into the car's infotainment and it will relax restrictions on the CAN bus, now you open up the gates for thieves as well.
And on top of that come the actual reasons for the security theatre: people modifying their ECUs to tune up their engines for higher power or speed limiters in trucks than is stated in the vehicle papers (at least in Europe, if you tune your vehicle and don't have the papers updated you're in legit felony territory), doing shit mods like "rolling coal" or otherwise tampering with emission controls (say to avoid having to refill adblue)... governments really REALLY do not like this and so regulations get tightened ever closer.