ser67

I had a suspicion my SC had been broken into last night - not difficult car was not locked (!)

But passengers door was not shut properly and interior light was on.

Thought nothing of it, but double checked this morning and chewing gum from armrest was gone so something must have happened.

The unusual thing was the navigation door was all the way open and the nav itself was all the way back - as it is when you initially open the door and before it moves to present one of three tilt positions.

On/Off and open/close soon sorted this out - problem sorted I think.

Could someone have manually lifted the door up to see what was behind it ? (Don't want to try myself in case I break it)

Or could an electrical glitch cause it to only open the nav door without a key in the ignition ???

I'm out today to purchase CCTV just in case

WIL44

Sounds a bit weired, probably easiest and cheapest thing would be to lock the car!!

Scarletti

+1... double lock the car!

Your guess does sound reasonable, some oik forcing open the Nav Door to see what was behind it... perhaps they just wanted to steal the stereo.

Was the glove box and center arm console rummaged through?

VVTiBob

Both doors can be moved manually as they open and close in the range of motion but do not lock at the end of the range. With that said, I would not recommend doing manual movements regularly. The possibility of forcing the door guides out of their very shallow tracks would increase with different forces, such as twisting, acting on the door.
Regarding an "electrical glitch". A glitch would have to complete a circuit to have the door move. Highly unlikely. Remember the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. In this case an opportunistic thief took advantage of an unlocked door to take property that did not belong to him and permanently deprive you of it. IMO you were lucky if your loss was limited to a pack of old chewing gum. No other items, ID, coins, etc were missing?

ser67

Armrest searched and big tub of chewing gum taken from lower section (?)

iPod/FM transmitter, some CD's and BLOC sunglasses left untouched as was glovebox.

Expensive'ish Sunglasses in top section, which non-owners usually don't know how to open also left untouched.

I'm now convinced nav-door manually opened, as can't see electric doing that unilaterally.

VVTiBob

With the loss as described...I would suspect your local juveniles, not serial thieves. But you'll never know...I do like the CCTV idea. It could provide the local police detectives with leads should it happen again.

toxic

I'm not a big fan of locking up the vehicle. It "can" create a situation where a thief does more damage getting in. As a rule I never leave anything valuable in any of my cars. Perfect example is my neighborhood was hit and multiple vehicles broken into. Smashed windows, pried doors, etc. I had my truck unlocked and although they went through it nothing was broken.

Scarletti

In the UK failing to secure the vehicle\talking all reasonable precautions may invalidate an insurance claim. They may well argue that the immobiliser/alarm could have prevented theft etc. Anything to avoid a payout really.

ser67

I am of the view that getting in to a locked car causes more damage than just opening an unlocked door, thats why I keep nothing actually in mine - except that blasted chewing gum.

I had an old friend from Uni some 25 years ago who bought an MG Midget for his second year there and would NEVER lock the doors, his reasoning was thieves just slash the hoods to enter - which were expensive to fix - much easier to get them to open the door (if they're in that mind set).

Its virtually impossible to drive away the SC because of the immobiliser, and TBH its a 10 year old car which really has little value to a car thief - they're after much newer vehicles these days.

CCTV equipment all up and running - recording midnight cats and large spiders crawling over the lenses

Its still a little unnerving to have your property opened and searched - whether car or house and Its locked now - and will remain so !