Re: Going stone-age
You also have to take into account how obvious it is that someone is stealing a car.
With old cars. the thief has to break a window, start hammering through the door with a screwdriver to break the lock, or otherwise obviously make a lot of noise and draw attention to themselves in order to steal a car. Ever see someone trying to break a steering lock? It is obvious a mile away what they are doing. That is ignoring the fact that even mechanically locked cars have alarm systems that make an awful din if someone starts breaking in.
Then they have to drive the car with the broken window and holes in the door/lock, not get noticed by coppers (who are trained to notice these things), and of course not had the car reported stolen (which because they made a massive din, means either you noticed, or one of your neighbours did and reported it)
This modern connected car can be hacked remotely, using an app, then the thief just walks up like he owns it, opens it normally, gets in and drives off.
Not to mention with mechanical locks, you need to be in the know. Most thieves learn about different cars, their mechanical weaknesses, where exactly to hammer the screwdriver to break the lock (if you get it wrong, the mechanical failsafe engages, the lock will jam and you won't be able to do anything else to it), etc.... You even get thieves that specialise in particular makes and models.
With connected cars, someone writes an app that does it, and sells it to wannabe criminals over the Internet, who just have to run said software/appliance, and then just drive off. Not much local training required. It is like the difference with hackers and script kiddies, except now being applied to cars.
There are not many skilled car thieves out there, but there are a lot of "script kiddie" equivalents who can run software. Like with those BMWs a few years back. Someone smart/well_funded/skilled cracked the BMW key fob and sold an app that would allow you to start any BMW assuming you could plug a dongle into its OBD2 port. As a result people who could not normally steal cars due to lack of ability, could just buy the software + dongle, and go at it. So many BMWs were stolen that insurance companies started refusing to insure them.
I agree with the original poster, all my cars are non-connected older cars (early 80s), and one has had many attempts to be stolen (thankfully the local yobbos don't know how to break the lock). I did retrofit alarms to the cars, and since then nobody has damaged them during their attempts.
Due to the sheer amount of pointless electronics and software in cars, I have no interest in anything post 2005 car wise. Even some of the 90s cars were getting too electronic, but those can still be dealt with.