Looks like SOME people in Texas couldn’t wait for the inevitable Black Friday sales at their local Chevrolet dealership! Or they just needed some new wheels. More than 180 wheels, to be specific.
Thieves struck Ancira-Winton Chevrolet in the Leon Valley enclave of San Antonio, Texas hard this week, taking wheels off 39 new Chevy trucks and six Camaros over a five-hour period before hauling their ill-gotten wares away in a huge rented Penske truck.
Here’s what local TV station KSAT-12 reported:
He said they used bolt cutters to get in just before midnight Sunday and left five hours later. “Do the math,” Murray said.
He said perhaps as many as half a dozen thieves spent less than seven minutes on each vehicle, probably using tools that pit stop mechanics use on race cars.
“They knew exactly what they were doing, how to jack them, how to block them,” Murray said.
Five hours! Forty-five vehicles! It’s disgusting, but admittedly also kind of amazing that they got away with it for so long without getting caught. The dealership’s manager even says they probably would have stolen more wheels, but couldn’t fit any extras in the truck.
Then again, there are some odd aspects to this crime, like the fact that the security cameras didn’t catch much of the thefts, or how security guards weren’t scheduled work that night. But management contends it wasn’t an “inside job,” just the work of a very efficient theft ring; similar crimes have happened in the area before.
So if you see an ad for 180 Chevy truck and Camaro wheels on Craigslist soon, well, now you know where they probably came from.
Visit KSAT-12 to watch the full report.
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.