Honda Civics and Accords from mid-1990s are favored targets for car thieves in Massachusetts and across the nation

Newer model cars, with their enhanced security systems, are harder to steal.

The 2000 Honda Civic was the most frequently stolen car in Massachusetts in 2010.

SPRINGFIELD – Honda Civics and Accords from the mid- to late-1990s continue to be the favored targets for car thieves, both in Massachusetts and across the nation.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau has just released its annual “Hot Wheels” report naming the ten most stolen vehicles in the United States. Topping the list for 2010 is the 1994 Accord, followed by the 1995 Civic.

That squares with what police are seeing on the streets of Springfield, detective Edward Cass, a member of the police department’s car theft unit, said Wednesday.

“They are the hot cars here and they unusually get stripped,” Cass said, generalizing the most frequently-stolen cars here to Accords, Civics and Acura Integras built in the mid-to-late 1990s. “They have always been easy to steal by popping the steering column.”

The 1994 Integra comes in at number 8 on the national list.

VTEC engines from those three vehicles, favored by street-racers and late-night rubber-burners, are particularly sought by thieves. “It’s like ‘Fast and Furious’ Cass said of the series of street-racing films.

Cass evoked another iconic car movie, “Gone in Sixty Seconds,” when he said that an experienced car thief can literally make off with one those mid-1990 Accords, Civics or Integras in less than a minute. “They just pop the ignition, if they have the proper tools, and off they go,” he said.

Newer model cars, with their enhanced security devices, are harder to steal, Cass said. Of the nearly 52,000 Honda Accords stolen nationally, over 44,000 were models made in the 1990s, compared with fewer than 5,700 that were produced since 2000, according to the Hot Wheels list.

Cass stressed that alarms and such things as steering-wheel locking devices are helpful in deterring thieves. “They will move onto the next Honda Civic two driveways down,” he said.

For the first time since 2002, the top-ten list features more domestic makes than foreign ones. These include: the 1999 Chevrolet pickup (full-size), the 1997 Ford F-150 pickup, the 2004 Dodge Ram, the 2000 Dodge Caravan the 2002 Ford Explorer and the 1999 Ford Taurus.

Cass said, however, that Springfield area car thieves still tend to heavily favor the foreign makes. Caravans and Plymouth Voyagers, have been among the domestic makes that are vulnerable around here, however, he said.

Cass said such stolen car lists tend to mirror the most popular vehicles within the selected geographical region. “We are a middle-class city so we don’t have too many (Cadillac) Escalades rolling around,” he said.

Interestingly enough, however, the 2007-2009 Escalade was the most popular among car thieves nationally, according to data released a year ago by the Highway Loss Data Institute, an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The number of motor vehicle thefts in Springfield has plummeted since the early 1990s, when thieves stole thousands of cars each year. According to statistics released earlier this year by the FBI, there were 872 motor vehicle thefts in 2010 — a 75% drop from the 25-year peak of 1993, when 3,770 cars were stolen.

The span of 1990-1994 accounts for the 5 years with the highest auto-theft rates in Springfield since 1985. The lowest rate of the past two-and-a-half decades came in 2009; 2010 represents the second-lowest rate during that period.

In Hampshire County, Northampton has seen a similar trend: after peaking at 160 motor vehicle thefts in 1991, there were just 29 thefts in 2009, the most recent year for which data are available.