Miata Mailing List: March 1994, Message #62
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   From: mac.avid.com!Michael_Wissner@avid.com
Subject: Re: alarms, clutches, etc.
   Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 18:18:13 -0500

Jack,
> 1. Barry Suskind noted that a friend has an alarm which is triggered
> when someone reaches into the interior of the car. I'd like to know
> more about it. Not sure that I want to go the alarm route (one more
> thing to go wrong with the car, more expense for a good one than the
> cost of replacement, personal inertia, etc.) - but that particular
> type sounds like the way to go.

I have a microwave interior alarm (along with LoJack, an Excalibur
door alarm, and I use The Club religiously; living in Boston I want to take
every precaution I can against car theft!).  About a week ago I came back
to my car, which had been parked overnight in a parking garage, and found
a two-foot long knife slash in the roof. However, nothing else was damaged
or stolen. The alarm indicated that it had gone off. My suspicion is that 
the knife protruding into the car set off the microwave alarm and scared 
away the intruder before he could make significant headway inside (at least
that's what I hope, because it makes me feel that investing in the
alarm was worth while). Either that, or it was just a case of pure
vandalism.
But the microwave has the advantage that it goes off pretty early in the
game, so the thief has to risk spending most of his time fooling around
while the alarm is going off, possibly attracting onlookers. I feel it is a
fairly useful deterrent; my repair (or replacement!) bill would probably
have been a lot higher if I didn't have it.

Mike