42 vehicles up for auction; asking price is P1.7 million

Own a fleet of cars for only P1.7 million.

The Philippine National Police is accepting bids for a lot of “disposable unclaimed, recovered and impounded carnapped HPG (Highway Patrol Group) motor vehicles” at Camp Crame in Quezon City.

The block of 42 stolen vehicles is made up mostly of sedans, such as Mitsubishi Lancer, with models dating from the 1990s to 2000s, officials said.

Bids start at P1,687,900, the government’s minimum selling price for the entire lot, according to the head of the PNP logistics office, Director George Q. Piano, who is also the chair of the disposal committee.

Piano said his committee would receive sealed bids not later than 2 p.m. on July 14. Bidding documents may be secured at the disposal committee secretariat office on the third floor of the LSS Building at Camp Crame.

Under Presidential Decree No. 1911, all recovered and impounded stolen motor vehicles that remain unclaimed by the real owners after three months will be considered abandoned and shall be disposed of in a public auction.

The vehicles are at the HPG’s central vehicles impounding area at Camp Crame, Piano said.

Tampered numbers

The HPG head, Chief Supt. Leonardo A. Espina, said the vehicles were not returned to their owners, as in ordinary car theft cases, because the authorities could no longer restore the chassis and engine numbers, which had been tampered.

“This makes it impossible for us to identify the owners. Ordinarily, we return vehicles to the carnap victims,” he said in a phone interview. He added, however, that other identifying markers could help victims prove ownership of a stolen car.

The HPG keeps a database of recovered vehicles on its website, including the plate number, model, date and place it was recovered, and where it is kept.

For instance, according to the listing of 1,897 recovered cars, a Honda Civic (THY-965) and a Ford Lynx (XFS-300) are among the vehicles at Camp Crame.

In the past, Espina said the cars were sold individually. The upcoming auction will be the first since Espina assumed his post, although this is a fairly regular activity, he said. Proceeds will go to the HPG’s anticar theft operations.

Bad condition

Espina said interested parties should not set their expectations too high about the quality and condition of the cars.

“Most of them are old and look deteriorated because they’ve not been used for a long time,” Espina said.

Piano’s bidding notice came with another cautionary note: “The (PNP) reserves the right to reject any or all bids, waive any defect contained therein and accept the offer which is most advantageous to the government.”

The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) said in a recent report that three out of every four cars stolen in the first six months of the year were recovered by the police.

Recovery rate

Of the 414 car thefts recorded from January to June 15, the DILG said 317 stolen vehicles were retrieved in police operations, particularly by the HPG.

This was a stark improvement from the recovery rate of just 16 percent for the same period in 2010 when only 156 vehicles were retrieved out of 946 stolen vehicles. The number of car thefts itself decreased by more than half, from 946 in the first six months of 2010 to 414 for the same period this year, the report said.

The DILG, which supervises the PNP, attributed the improved car theft statistics to a “revitalized” HPG.

But recent violent carjacking incidents, including the back-to-back killings of two women in Quezon City last month, have dampened the accomplishment.