Thief caught with chopped-up BMW X6 in his van

Border police sieze old VW van filled with a broken-up, stolen BMW X6.

One of the benefits of stealing a car (allegedly) is that you can drive away in the vehicle you stole. There is, of course, always the option of cutting it into lots of tiny pieces and loading it into a van, which is what a certain Romanian thief chose to do.

The unnamed criminal was caught red-handed as he attempted to cross the Nagylak border in Hungary in a VW van stuffed to the brim with bits of a BMW X6 SUV. Upon suspecting something was awry with the unusual cargo load, border forces ran the vehicle identification number (VIN).

The BMW X6, as it turns out, had been stolen a few days earlier. A report by Police.hu claims the X6 was nicked in Italy before it was cut up into lots of pieces by an angle grinder and stuffed into a tired-looking van.

Somehow the thief made it through Austria and Slovenia before his journey came to an abrupt end. It’s not clear where the thief was heading or who the unlucky owner of the BMW X6 is. Italian authorities are said to be investigating.

While we can only frown upon stealing, we have to hand it to the thief for using his initiative. Were it not for the Hungarian authorities, this particular Bimmer would probably be on its way to a country where demand for stolen vehicles is high such as Africa, Pakistan and the Middle East. Or listed as parts on eBay.

The chance of getting a stolen car recovered, according to numbers from RetainaGroup, dropped to 41 per cent in 2011. That figure was 70 per cent in 2002.

In related news the BMW X5 was rated as the UK’s most stolen car for the fifth year running by tracking device company Tracker.