Should drivers be allowed to lock parked cars?

You may have had to read the question above twice just to confirm that you understood it correctly, so ludicrously self-evident does the answer seem. But there was a time when this was a perfectly legitimate thing for Autocar to be asking.

- KRIS CULMER

Locks for cars started appearing in late 1900s America, where “car stealing has flourished”. Initially these didn’t lock the car itself but rather the ignition, steering wheel or bonnet. In fact, one car could have as many as eight of the things.

By 1921, the Daily Mail here in Britain was “calling attention to the marked increase in theft of motor cars” and imploring owners “to take the elementary precaution of having their cars fixed with one of the locking arrangements”.

Three years on, Autocar praised an “ingenious” creation: a master lock that effected every lock on a single car via cables and bolts. It’s funny to read now - as is the fuss we made about a Hillman being designed so it “can be left entirely locked up when desired”.

Of course, leaving your car unlocked left it and anything inside it vulnerable to theft. “We are often surprised at the casual manner in which people leave valuable luggage in cars without taking the trouble even to lock the doors,” Autocar once commented. “How often, too, are cases reported of doctors losing packages of dangerous drugs from their cars?”