Ok. Here it comes...A few boring advices and stories.
First. Rule number one (at least for us normal people in Moscow
) - KEEP YOUR WINDOWS AS MUCH TINTED AS POSSIBLE.
This basicly is a very good security stuff (not to mention how cool it looks). Unless Your car is old and cheap. Why? Because when it's old and cheap stealers may think that You tinted Your windows because may be You got something good inside and will break them but will not care or be scared at all cause the car is cheap and old.
When the car is okey tinted windows help a lot when they are 100% or 95% tinted (not less, less is a stupid FASHION or how You call it stuff). Because with such black windows as 95% people around cant only see what You got inside and who's inside , the most important is that they dont see HOW MANY people are inside and in night You got to go REALLY close to the car and spend quite some time just check if there's noone in and still You wont be sure.
And car thieves dont have that much time at all. In fact usually stealing happens very very fast.
TRUE STORY:
I once quite a long time ago (roughly two years ago) had to move to my wifes place which was located in the center of Moscow and there was no secure parking anywhere near that hood. By that time I had quite an old BMW. Man, that car really made one car stealer a neurotic person till the end of his life I beleive.
The car had an alarm (piece of shit actually) and absolutely nothing inside of value. However some local mofo made it his target for his night escapades. That was fun, because as an adult webmaster I usually work up to 4AM and the flat where I lived was on the second floor with the car right below the windows.
First night I heard the alarm I quicky ran down and found nothing. The guy was probably checking reaction (and probably found it unbeleivable when I appeared in less than 4 minutes in 4AM approximately, think those people never heard of webmasters ).
Second night I heard it again and ran down and again found nothing. Probably he thought that the night before was just an accident and normal people should sleep by 4-5AM.
Third night was calm.
Forth night I slept good but the next morning I had quite a good laugh. You see, any NORMAL BMW
, or probably any other car, has two door locks, one on the right front door and another on the left drivers front door. Well not in my case. In my case someone broke the lock and torn half of it out and completely damaged it on the front left drivers door probably long time before I even saw that car and purchased it for the first time. Since that broken lock looked really really ugly and I honestly never gave a fuck about that car I never had time to repair it and instead my father found somewhere some kind of small round shaped metal piece and placed it hard there since it fitted good and because of the nature of the damage of the lock it also jammed there pretty good. My father thought it looked better that way.
Well... my night car thief probably mistaken that small piece of metal for some kind of security shit and when I came in the morning I found out that the metal piece had an accurate HOLE in it! Poor idiot spent half a night screwing the metal just to find out by morning that the fucking lock was broken and jammed anywhay and that metal piece was just my fathers great design idea (best since he "bullshitted the thieves")...
I had a good laugh when I saw that and I honestly hope the thief saw my demonic laughing...
Well, next night , the final one, I heard some SLAP sound and again my car alarm.
I ran down (because of sound pretty disturbed that time ) and saw a shape running away. I was actually kinda suprised to see anyone in a distance running because I was already used not to find anyone. I tried to pursue the fucker but I guess webmasters arent made for good running, at least me and he got away.
I went to the car and was fucking surprised because ... I found NOTHING.
In the morning I came down and what brought my attention was quite a big piece of red brick lying on earth by my car. It just didnt feet there. I was thinking already to drive away when something on the car brought my attention again. What I saw and when I understood what happened really made me laugh and MUCH.
BMW 518 rear windows have a small black line like 2 or 4 sm. wide wich like separates the window in two parts. I actually never even cared about them or took them to my attention. Since they're black and look like plastic I always thought they were actually made of plastic. Now I know they're made of good metal. Because mine had a DISTINCT red trace on it and was slightly damaged like something hit it really hard.
What actually happened is that probably being extremely pissed off by three unlucky nights of which one was full of useless screwing my night thief decided to go the TOUGH way...
What he did, is that he brought a brick, lined and targetted it onto my rear window and threw it really hard. Now I know why last time I was able to see him and he did not run away as fast as usuall before I was down. That's because he was in a DESPERATE STATE OF SHOCK when instead of breaking the window glass his brick bounced back of the old cars window and fell on earth with no visible damage to the window at all (by dark night it's close to impossible to see that black line crossing the rear window when You're short on time)....
Next day I moved to another place and local thiefs of that hood probably still have legends about THE UNTOUCHABLE CAR.