Hyundai Sonata favorite of Mass. car thieves in 2025

A 2024 Hyundai Sonata

— Photo by MercurySable99

Boston Guardian article by Daniel Larlham Jr. This has been slightly edited.

(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)

A Hyundai has taken the crown as the most common target for car thieves in Massachusetts.

While the Honda Accord tied with the Hyundai Elantra the year before, the Honda played second fiddle to the Hyundai Sonata in 2025.

Sonatas were stolen a total of 209 times throughout the commonwealth, with Accords just behind, at 198, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB).

The Hyundai Elantra, Honda CR-V and Honda Civic filled out the rest of the top five most stolen vehicles of last year. The Elantra has remained the most stolen vehicle nationwide.

The good news is that vehicle thefts in Massachusetts have continued to decline. According to NICB data, the state recorded a total of 6,393 vehicles stolen in 2025 and 7,518 in 2024, marking a 15% decline in vehicle thefts statewide.

Nationwide, vehicle thefts have declined to their lowest levels in several decades. Vehicle thefts decreased by 23% in 2025, following a 17% decline in 2024. 2023 was considered the peak of a pandemic-related surge in vehicle thefts across the country.

Boston, however, seems to be somewhat of a mixed bag. According to Boston Police Department (BPD) spokesman John Boyle the city has recorded 881 thefts so far this year, a slight decrease from the 897 the city saw between January 1 and September 4 last year. The city reported a total of 1,300 total car thefts in 2025, according to Boyle, while 2024, according to previous reporting from The Guardian, had only 1,141 thefts.

While the NICB does not get as granular as the city level, it does track metropolitan areas. The Boston-Cambridge-Newton area saw a decrease from 4,645 thefts in 2024 to 4,028 thefts in 2025.

But Massachusetts in general is comparatively safe from car thieves, ranking 46th among the states in 2025 for vehicle-theft rates, at a rate of 89.56 thefts per 100,000 people. The adjacent states of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont, which all saw similar or greater declines in car theft, all had considerably greater rates of theft compared to Massachusetts last year.

In raw numbers alone, Massachusetts was a dwarf compared to the top two states for total car thefts, California and Texas, with 136,988 and 75,269, respectively. All of the top ten states by total vehicle thefts saw thefts above 17,000.

While Hyundai sedans have been the most popular cars to steal in Massachusetts and nationwide, Boyle said that two-wheelers, namely scooters, mopeds and motorcycles, have been the most common targets for vehicle thieves, accounting for 39% of all vehicle-theft incidents in the city. Catalytic converters, too, seem to be safe, as the city has only recorded two catalytic-converter incidents in 2026, according to Boyle.

The NICB suggests that automakers’ implementation of new anti-theft technologies as well as public-awareness campaigns and state and federal investments into theft prevention have led to these decreases in auto theft. But of course, even though car thefts continue to decrease, the chance it happens is never zero. BPD suggests car owners to always lock their vehicles, keep windows up and stay mindful of where they’re parking. Installing such anti-theft devices as wheel locks and alarms, keeping valuables out of sight or out of the vehicle, and using third-party GPS trackers like AirTags can further deter thieves.