A real-life train heist-style attempt at car theft took place on April 3 near the Milbertshofen train station Germany, though it turns out it’s a hell of a lot harder to steal from a train than it looks in old black-and-white movies.
The enterprising thieves had a pretty solid plan in place to get the VW off of a car carrier train car. A self-made ramp placed on the train was used to get the Golf off, according to the Munich Federal Police’s report on Presseportal, and a section of the guardrail running alongside the train car had been cut out—the perfect place to slip the car through once they’d freed it from its confines.
Or, well, it would have been the perfect heist. Except for the fact that the thieves didn’t exactly factor in the size of VW as it would relate to the size of the hole they’d cut. Whoops!
To me, it looks like the thieves knew how wide the car’s front end was but failed to account for the fact that they probably wouldn’t be pushing the car straight out of the guardrail hole. Trying to push it diagonally resulted in the car getting hopelessly stuck.
The police didn’t arrive until the morning, according to Presseportal, which meant that, theoretically, the thieves could have had time to carve out more of the guardrail under the cover of night.
Instead, they fled the scene, leaving the car still running and still wedged in the rail. By that time the cops showed up, the scene had long since been cleared of any criminals, and even a helicopter search failed to track down the offenders.
Unfortunately, since the incident took place in a pretty isolated area, there aren’t many leads regarding who was behind the heist. The Munich Federal Police are still asking for information from the public as they scratch their heads on this one, hoping, I’m sure, that these would-be thieves don’t attempt to strike again, this time actually knowing what the hell they’re doing.
H/t Carscoops