Can you unlock someone else’s car with your key?
I’ve seen keysmiths and tow drivers unlock cars a hundred times. It takes 20 seconds, tops.
They stick a flat J-bar down the window casing, and pop up the door button from the bottom.
So, keys are only to make you feel safe.
Obviously, the manufacturers could put a 20¢ metal box over the exposed part, but that would cost them 20¢.
Do they really care about stolen cars? No, they sell the replacements.
I’ve used a ‘slim Jim’ to open cars myself, and they work great. On older cars. Not anymore.
I don’t have any definite info on this, but I don’t think there have been many cars made in the last decade that could be opened this way.
P.S. I’m not a car thief. I bought the ‘slim Jim’ at a 99 cent store after about the tenth time a friend asked me to help them open their car with coat hanger wire. I have a lot of ditzy people around me that lock their keys in a few times every year.
Forget cars, go for houses!
I work for a mortuary transport company that services about three dozen funeral homes. Some completely unrelated places have interchangable keys. They’re mostly Quickset, Schlage, and a few Yale keys.
Just because there are zillions of possible combinations doesn’t mean that they’re able to mass produce that many.
Fun fact: any Jaguar key will lock any Jaguar though, at least in theory, any Jaguar key will only unlock ine Jaguar.
My father owned a 1988 (I think) Toyota mini van. One day he was at the mall, came back out to his car, unlocked it and found that the key wouldn’t turn in the ignition. “What’s up?” He thought, until he looked in the back seat to see a child seat he didn’t own. He had walked up to the wrong van, same make - same color. His key would operate the door lock but not the ignition… Wierd.
Since the conversation has left cars, I will add this fact.
My brother told me once that Samsonite keys will open any Samsonite suitcase of the same type. When I laughed at him in disbelief, he dug out the Samsonite keys for his suitcase and promptly opened the suitcase I had just purchased.
Both suitcases were an older version of the “Hardside Luggage - 200 Series Oyster” that you can see at the Samsonite luggage site.
I used to have a crappy Datsun that had a really sensible feature. You couldn’t push down the button and pull in the handle on the door to lock the car. You HAD to use the key from the outside of the driver’s side to lock it. It was impossible to lock your keys in your car. Very minor hassle, but prevented much bigger hassles. Not a day goes by that I don’t see people in my parking lot below with coat hangers, trying to get into their locked cars. I wonder why more cars don’t have this feature?
Jill
The keypad entry was one of those features I would never have paid for, but it was the old, “We can order the car you want, and you’ll have it in six weeks… OR, for $2,000 less, we have a car on the lot that has MORE features than what you want.” So I got the keypad entry, and man oh man, I never been locked out since. I love it.
BTW, and just to stay on topic, the key from my 1996 sable opened the door and worked the ignition to my 1988 sable, but not vice versa.
[[The keypad entry was one of those features I would never have paid for, but it was the old, “We can order the car you want, and you’ll have it in six weeks… OR, for $2,000 less, we have a car on the lot that has MORE features than what you want.” So I got the keypad entry, and man oh man, I never been locked out since. I love it.]] CkDextHavn
I have the keypad on my car too, and I also love it. Being the kind of person I am, though, I have managed to find ways to fuck things up. Twice I have parked in an underground parking lot and unconsciously turned my lights on to drive out. Then I drive to my destination and forget to turn off my lights (because it’s DAYTIME, dammit), throw my keys under the seat and lock the car, planning to punch in my code to get back in. BUT - the lights run the battery down, the keypad is run off the electricity of the car and I can’t get the door open. Jump the battery, you say? But I can’t open the hood because the hood release is inside and the door is locked. End up calling a locksmith. I’ve done this twice.
My work car is the same make and model as my personal car, but doesn’t have the keypad entry. So I have this habit in my own car of throwing the keys under the seat and locking the door. I’ve done this in the State car twice and had to call a locksmith to open the door.
Okay, so I’m an idiot.
Every VW I’ve ever owned has the same feature. It’s a great idea. FWIW, If you wanna lock your keys in, just leave the passenger door open, lock the driver’s door, walk around the car, throw your keys in, push down the passenger door lock and shut it. Viola! Keys locked in. I wanted to share 2 additional things, though.
Number one: Tow truck drivers and the like use a contraption shaped like a square root sign ( Don’t feel like taking a hour to look up the code for it, hope you know what I mean ) to unlock modern cars with the sliding locks on the door. They actually fit under the window and have a protrusion that the driver uses to move the button itself. Police can use a universal police lock gun that will open ANY lock. Only police may legaly posess these devices.
Number two: About 5-7 years ago, I was driving slowly down a residential street in my 1980 Honda Civic wagon, when I saw a guy trying to get into his almost identical car with a hanger. On impulse I stoped, pulled my key out of the ignition, and said “Try this.” We were both floored when the door opened! What are the odds? ( wait…that was what the mailbag tried to answer;))
Don’t know about regulations in your part of the world, but lock guns are readily available elsewhere. See:
http://www.bairdco.com/eqlockpicks.htm
This particular place requires you to afirm you are locksmith, motor vehicle manufacturer, repossesor, or work in security/maintenance/tow trucking…
Also, I think it was the Anarchist’s Cookbook that mentioned you could make a crude lock gun by replacing an electric toothbrush’s brush with a needle. Essentially that’s all the lock gun does - brute force searching of lock combinations.
[[FWIW, If you wanna lock your keys in, just leave the passenger door open, lock the driver’s door, walk around the car, throw your keys in, push down the passenger door lock and shut it. Viola! Keys locked in.]]
Hey, thanks. I needed more ways to do this.
I used to do just that, leaving my keys in the glove box, because I had keyless entry.
Then one day, the battery died, and I had to wait for AAA.
JoeyBlades, funny you mentioned that…I was reading the column and thought to myself, “I’ve got a story, I’ll start a thread about this.” Sure enough, theres already a thread, and damn it if there isn’t almost the exact same story already told.
Anyways, here’s my version. My neighbor had a relatively new 1988ish metallic Blue Toyota Previa. Now if everyone might recall they were shaped like eggs with wheels, and in a time where minivans were boxy Chrystlers so it stood out like a sore ugly thumb. They were pretty uncommon, and these factors added up to the owners not really having to look real hard for it in the parking lot. My neighbor and I were getting shuttled around by his mom (we were probably 14), and came out of the store of some kind and all piled into this minivan. The door popped right open, and like you his mom was puzzled when the ignition wouldn’t start. After checking the lights and all the other potential problems something really minor tipped us kids off. We quickly scampered out of the van, looked to see if anyone had seen us, and strolled over a couple rows to the right van. Got some laughs out of it for a while.
I’m thinking these new keys, and expensive computer chips are more trouble than their worth…but I did lock my keys in my car twice in 3 days last week.
I had a 1976 Toyota Corolla Station Wagon. Loved it. Except the time I locked the keys in. So, on a whim, i went to my Advanced Writing teacher, who had a 1987 Toyota Minivan. Asked if I could borrow her keys to see if they’d open my door. They Did. On a whim, I tried her door with my keys. Bingo. Never did try the ignition. 
I’ve heard from junkyard guys that older toyotas didn’t have that many different combinations, and it’s shockingly few. But considering how many aren’t on the road, I’ll bet they are safe.
I recall reading a locksmithing book that explained that, realistically, there are a lot fewer key combinations than you would think there are if you just blindly did the math. This is for two reasons:
The tumblers have some “slop” so that the key will still work as it wears; thus, two keys cut slightly differently will work in the same lock.
You cannot physically cut all possible key combinations, because the difference in height between two adjacent “nook-and-crannies” is limited to what a key machine can cut.
When you come right down to it, there were surprisingly few truly unique key combinations (I think there are far less than a hundred in some cases), as you might suspect from the number of key-matching stories above. Soo… I think Dave and Bob and Steve, the locksmithing guys in the Mailbag article who quoted thousands or millions of possible combinations, are dead wrong.
If anyone’s interested, I’ll try to pull this book out tonight. I think it’s still sitting around the house somewhere.
Yes please, Zut. Dig it up if you can.
Jill
What about RKE (Remote Keyless Entry)?
I had the same thing happen as JoeyBlades’ father and Omniscient & company. I had a 1982 Citation, which I parked at a mall one day. When I was done shopping I went out to the approximate area I left the car, thought I found it, unlocked the door, and got in. Then I paused–the interior was much cleaner than when I left. Either somebody had broken in and cleaned it out, or… I slunk out of there, found my own car, and hoped nobody noticed me.
Also, as I found out, it pays to have an extra set of car keys in your wallet (or purse)–you avoid a lot of aggravation that way. (Though, as I also found out, taking those keys out of your wallet and then forgetting you did so until too late increases aggravation.)
My grandparents by coincidence bought another Oldsmobile in the late '70s I think that had exactly the same door keys as their other Olds. So they had four door keys.