Looking for a good car alarm

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a remote start/car alarm package in one of my cars that started malfunctioning and I’d like to replace it with a proximity alarm, and actually purchase a proximity alarm for all of my cars. I’d rather not buy anything at all, but there are a lot of vandalism-happy little teenagers and adult lowlifes who have been trespassing and letting air out of my tires and all other sorts of neighborhood problems for myself and others. It just seems like a good idea to have a good alarm that will detect when someone comes near the cars.

I have the cars all parked in my yard and have actually had people sneaking around the house at night as well, so a good proxy alarm would serve a dual purpose of letting me know when someone is near the cars and the house in general. So, does anyone know of any good car alarms that go off when someone comes near?

All of my cars are hard tops and not convertibles. Does that mean that a proximity alarm wouldn’t be effective? Or would it still function well with the sensitivity set a little higher? My old alarm was one that seemed to only go off if there was a loud bang or other loud noise or vibration. It really didn’t do much if someone tried to key the car or anything else. I could have left that one on the highest setting and still had someone jack it up and take the wheels if they wanted. It really didn’t do much. On the other hand, if someone was setting off fireworks three streets away for the 4th of July, it would go off and make sure I was aware of the situation. Useless!

So, does anyone out there have any suggestions? How about Viper? Others?

Thanks!

2

Move.

3

The reason why proximity alarms have (thankfully!) fallen out of favor is that exact issue-- if they’re sensitive enough to detect someone screwing around with the outside of your car they’re going to be going off all the damn time. When someone hears a car alarm, the default assumption is “some asshole’s car alarm is going off again, must be windy” not that someone’s car is actually being stolen or vandalized.

If you’re parking the cars in your yard (?) I’d think a better solution would be some motion-activated floodlights and maybe a surveillance system. These days you can also get dashcams that run all the time which if you put them somewhere prominent could be a good deterrent.

Otherwise, yeah, move. Between the bands of wild car-vandalizing kids of all ages and the people parking their cars on the lawn (;)) sounds like a great neighborhood.

4

Agreed.
If you have to constantly have to worry about your car, then your neighborhood is no longer safe. It’s time to go.

If I had a vehicle worth stealing ( even my motor home doesn’t qualify) I would install a kill switch that would have to be physically closed for the vehicle to start. Beyond that, I remove anything “theft-worthy” from my car.

5

Yep, when you are parking your cars in your yard, it is definitely time to move.