Someone got told “its the white toyota out the front, here’s the key”… So their key worked in our (old, at the time) Toyota and they took ours a few suburbs away and then realised their mistake.
Didn’t bring it back … just told the police where it was, who then told us.
I drove a blue Mercury Lynx back in the eighties when everybody and his brother drove an Escort or Lynx. At one time, all five of my siblings as well as me did. It was a joy to find in a crowded mall parking lot. 
I currently drive a dark red S10. Considering that they haven’t made them for 11 years, there are still a surprising number of those around, enough for me to have a couple of bumper stickers.
Walked out of the mall & started to put our bags in the trunk when she said, “That’s not our car”. Upon looking again I realized I don’t keep an umbrella on the ‘shelf’ behind the rear seat. Not only was it the same make, model, & color as ours which was three spaces further down, but it must have come from the same dealer as the first 5 (of 7) on the license plate were the same.
When I was a kid we were on vacation in the family station wagon. We parked at a visitor parking lot to some park and when we came back there were 2 identical station wagons in the lot. and the door key fit both of them. We were seriously confused until we found the other car (ours) after going through the other one looking for our stuff.
Long ago, I had a red Ford Escort. I parked in the shopping center lot, went shopping, and came back out. My car was gone. Not the next aisle, not farther out. Gone.
There ***was ***a brown Escort near where I parked, but my red baby was gone. I searched, confused for 10 minutes or more, and was about to go get the police when I looked at the license plate on the brown Escort. It was the same as mine. It dawned on me! Someone has switched tags, and stolen my car in some complex CIA-type clandestine mole hunt involving the utmost secrecy in getting away and not being followed. As I examined the car more, I realized it was actually mine.
The yellow-ish sodium? lights in the parking lot turned my red car brown. A nice, light turd brown. I’ve never witnessed the same phenomenon again.
And, while working as a mechanic at Pep Boys eons ago, I got a ticket to change the starter on a Dodge Caravan. I grabbed the keys, found the nearest Caravan, cranked it up, and drove it in. At some point the manager came and asked me what I was doing to Mr. Smith’s car. I told him this is Mr. Brown’s car. A brief investigation showed that both sets of keys fit the other Caravan’s locks and ignition.
Two blue Caravans at the same shop at the same time with the same keys. And my lottery numbers never win.
The world is an interesting place at times.
God, I did this the other day in a parking garage. A car was parked RIGHT next to mine that was identical in every respect from the outside. Same make, same model, same year, same color, same everything. I keyed my fob, heard that “click-click” sound (from my “real” car), and got in and tried to start it… until I noticed miscellaneous junk that obviously wasn’t my miscellaneous junk lying about, and backed away real quick.
Basilica blue MG - in some lights it is blue, in others it is green :smack:
And my first minivan back in the 90s was a 1984 maroon dodge Caravan … the most ubiquitous color of the most popular momvan at the time. I once came out of the Commisary to find 7 identical except for contents momvans in a row :eek:
I had a custom made seat cover on the driver’s seat, and floor mats made from recycled oriental carpet so it was pretty plain which one was mine at any given time - but still :dubious::smack:
Dumb question. In this day and age, do people leave their cars and trunks unlocked in public parking areas? Squeegee, was the other car unlocked, or did your fob open it?
In the late 90s, my mother and I both drove four door Saturn SL2s. Same color.
We worked at the same office, and tended to park next to each other.
Turns out that our keys worked in each other’s cars, too. Mine was a standard transmission - hers was an automatic, so it was obvious once either of would go to start the car.
I do more often than not. I’ll lock it on occasion, usually if I leave something of value in plain sight.
the phone call to the police would have turned into a Steven Wright routine:
“Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to my friend – he said, ‘Do I know you?’” – Steven Wright
By pure happenstance, it was unlocked. And to answer your other question, I don’t do this but yes, I’ve known folks who leave their cars unlocked in public places if there’s nothing valuable in them, so someone won’t break the windows trying to get in for nothing.
I have a black 2001 Ford Taurus. I keep trying to get into much newer, nicer cars of different makes and models >_<. Wishful thinking I guess. Strangely enough, when there’s another Taurus in the lot, I usually notice and don’t mistake it for mine. (My headrest is turned backwards )
Back when we first got married, my wife drove a slate gray Subaru wagon. She came out of her aerobics class one night and got in her car, noticed that something wasn’t right, and realized that she was in somebody else’s car. Coincidentally, that someone else had done the exact same thing, getting in my wife’s car then realizing it wasn’t hers!
On a more tragic note, several weeks ago at a Kansas City Chiefs football game there was an incident where a guy went out to the parking lot and fell asleep in the Jeep that he thought he had ridden to the game in. It turns out he was in the same row but about ten vehicles away from where he should have been. Wrong Jeep. The owner of the Jeep the guy was sleeping in returned to his car to find the guy asleep in there, pulled him out, and several tailgating bystanders beat the crap out of him, thinking he had broken into the car. Someone later realized the guy was turning blue and wasn’t breathing, they called 911, but by the time the ambulance got there and got him to the hospital, the guy was dead. I suspect there was alcohol involved all around, but jeez talk about an innocent mix-up going horribly wrong!