A full insurance policy is two separate bets bundled into one payment. Collision cover is a bet about your driving. Comprehensive cover is a bet about everything else that can happen to a car — and mostly that means theft.
Insurers publish loss indexes for both, on the same 100-is-average scale. Subtracting one from the other separates the cars that get stolen from the cars that get wrecked.
| Model | Comprehensive | Collision | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Honda S2000 | 288 | 142 | +145 |
| Dodge Durango | 234 | 112 | +123 |
| Ford F-450 | 220 | 101 | +119 |
| BMW M240i | 244 | 139 | +105 |
| Cadillac Escalade | 220 | 116 | +104 |
| Lexus LX | 224 | 124 | +100 |
| Lincoln Mark LT | 192 | 96 | +96 |
The Honda S2000 records comprehensive claims at nearly three times the average rate while its collision rate sits at 142. Its drivers are not unusually careless. Something else is happening to those cars.
What the gap is made of
Three things push comprehensive up without touching collision, and they sort by vehicle type in a way that is easy to read.
Theft is the big one. The Escalade, Durango, LX and Mark LT are the classic targets — large, valuable, in demand for parts, and easy to move. The S2000 and M240i are the other kind of target: enthusiast cars stolen to order rather than opportunistically.
Parts value drives it further. A vehicle worth more in pieces than whole gets taken more often, which is why full-size SUVs and trucks appear on this list decades after they left the showroom.
Weather and glass fill in the rest, and they are the reason the index is not a pure theft ranking — a hailstorm generates comprehensive claims across every car parked outdoors that night.
The reverse list is a different kind of car
Flip the sort and the profile changes completely.
| Model | Collision | Comprehensive | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hyundai Tiburon | 197 | 106 | -92 |
| Toyota Supra | 196 | 111 | -85 |
| Toyota GR86 | 197 | 115 | -82 |
| Hyundai Elantra N | 210 | 131 | -79 |
Small, quick, affordable. These cars get crashed at roughly twice the average rate and stolen at below-average rates — a GR86 is not worth stealing and is very much worth driving hard.
The two lists barely overlap, which is the point. "Risky car" is not one property. It is at least two, and they attach to different vehicles for different reasons.
What it changes for a buyer
On a newer car the practical effect is modest, because comprehensive is usually the smaller half of the premium.
On an older one it inverts. Collision payouts are capped by what the car is worth, so as the value falls that side of the premium falls with it. Theft risk does not fall the same way — a fifteen-year-old Escalade is still worth stealing, and its parts are worth more than they were new.
That is why insuring an old luxury SUV can cost more than the arithmetic suggests, and why dropping comprehensive on a cheap car is a defensible choice while dropping it on an old Escalade is not.
The other reason it matters
A frequently stolen model is also a frequently recovered one, and recovered cars come back with histories. Stripped, damaged, sometimes rebuilt and resold with paperwork that does not mention any of it.
On the models at the top of that first table, the odds that a given used example has a theft event somewhere in its past are meaningfully higher than average. A free VIN check is what surfaces it.
Frequently asked questions
Which cars are stolen most often?
Judging by comprehensive claim frequency against a model's own collision rate, the standouts are the Honda S2000 (comprehensive index 288 against collision 142), Dodge Durango (234 vs 112), Ford F-450 (220 vs 101) and Cadillac Escalade (220 vs 116). Large SUVs and desirable sports cars dominate the gap.
What is the difference between comprehensive and collision cover?
Collision pays when you hit something. Comprehensive pays for almost everything else that happens to the car — theft, vandalism, hail, fire, a tree, a stone through the windscreen. Because it excludes driving accidents, a high comprehensive index relative to collision points at theft and weather rather than at drivers.
Which cars are crashed most but rarely stolen?
Small performance cars. The Toyota GR86 records a collision index of 197 against a comprehensive index of 115, and the Hyundai Elantra N runs 210 against 131. These are cars bought to be driven hard by drivers who then claim for it — the opposite profile to a stolen Escalade.
Does a high theft rate raise my premium a lot?
It raises the comprehensive portion, which is usually the smaller half of a full policy — but on an older car it can become the dominant part, because collision cover is capped by a low vehicle value while theft risk is not. On a fifteen-year-old Escalade the theft exposure is close to the whole premium.
Denis Kataev is a serial solopreneur and the founder of ForCar. With 15+ years in software engineering and 10 years in SEO, he builds data-driven products end to end — backed by a sharp eye for design. At ForCar he mines proprietary vehicle datasets, turning raw numbers into buying advice you can actually trust.
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