I thought I should share this:
On Sunday 19th June I picked up a new STI from a dealer in Christchurch, low mileage one owner immaculate car in silver.
I live in a small village near Cambridge. The car was parked on my drive outside of the house probably 100 yards from the main road.
On wednesday 22 June at approx 2.00pm in the afternoon, some "person" smashed down the front door of my house with what can only have been some sort of ram as it completely smashed the front door and door frame.
They found my car keys which were not on view and hidden in a kitchen cupboard. Stole the car and escaped unchallenged.
They then drove only approx 30 miles away and parked the car in a quiet place no doubt to see if the car had a tracker fitted. The car does have a tracker and the police located the car later the same evening.
The police attended and have taken finger prints of the house and also the car was taken to their compound to be checked for finger prints etc.
I have not been allowed to touch the vehicle but it does not appear to be damaged in any way.
The shocking thing with this is the nature of the theft, that someone can batter down the door of a house in the middle of the day and get away with it. We are now scared being in the property and will have to install new doors and for peace of mind will now get a house alarm linked to the police station.
Our thoughts are that the pleasure of owning an STI is not worth this amount of heartache, all the locks and alarm will have to be changed now as the thieves still have a set of keys.
How do people out there protect their STIs, I had a wrx before this and never had this situation. Admittedly I did not have any secondary security other than the alarm, but would that have made any difference , I think not unless the keys for that were separate to the car keys... where do you stop.
Any advice welcome, but really thought I should share this as a wake up call to everyone.
The car will not be coming back home to us, we don't want the threat anymore, it will go direct to the garage to have the alarm and key locks changed and then will be sold from the garage. So if anyone wants a MY05 STI with only 39K miles and two previous owners in silver, completely standard with full subaru main dealer service history... you could get it at a bargain price!