It’s the time of year when everyone writes their retrospective for the past twelve months, including the anti-vehicle-theft gurus at Lojack. The company has fed our paranoia by naming the most frequently stolen vehicles (which, oddly enough, excludes the Audi S8), and now it’s recapping its top auto theft recoveries of the year.

As one Atlanta car thief learned the hard way, even disabling the OnStar GPS system in a Cadillac Escalade isn’t enough to affect Lojack, and the company was able to assist police with recovering the stolen Cadillac.

Carjacking a salesman at gunpoint isn’t a good idea, either, if the Lexus your driving has  a vehicle locator system installed, and even less expensive used cars can benefit from a tracking system. A man who took a check from a stranger for his used Honda Civic (bad idea, by the way) was able to get his car back when the check turned out to be made of rubber (imagine that).

Sometimes, a single Lojack system can help recover multiple vehicles, like the thirty  cars stolen from a Southern California used car dealer. Only one was equipped with the theft recovery system, but it enabled police to track down all thirty. A similar thing happened to the owner of a Honda Accord Crosstour, whose system helped recover stolen cars in shipping containers destined for export.

In 2011, Lojack has also been instrumental in closing chop shops, breaking up an international auto theft ring, tracking down a murder suspect in a stolen car and even foiling the kidnapping of a four year old girl. We’d call that a good year for the company, and we wish them equal success in 2012.