I know the area well....its changed but not entirely, at least Water St....I know MSOE has. I know of a guy who had a TR stolen from Water St earlier this decade as well, they found it months later abandoned after the power master setup failed, it had the VIN switched to a 80's Skylark, new carpet and was in primer, IIRC....saw a post on a Turbo Buick site a long time ago about it and also saw the car a couple times post-recovery at cruise ins, I think he had a new VIN stamped on the door by the DMV. I used to drive my cars rarely down there, don't go bar hopping as much anymore and have a daily beater to keep them safe. An old beater 86' Monte LS I had, someone got the door open right on Water St in a parking lot one night while out, but the cheapie noise alarm must of scared them away. Water St is an ok area but its only a minute in a couple directions from absolute garbage/ghetto.
As for columns, I've used and been happy with the bright red removable column guard found at Pep Boys and I think on e-bay too. The column part broken is cheap metal, not plastic....pretty easy to do with a screwdriver/vicegrips or whatnot. I've seen many theft recovery cars at local salvage yards and some wannabe theives must practice on junkyard cars too, a fresh g-body will come in with a good column and a month later or two when I go back the column is busted where they do it to hot-wire. Real nice
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