Monday, October 12, 2026
the Jalisco and Sinaloan Mexican cartels are increasingly renting thousands of U.S. trucks and cars each year, driving them across the border to keep top capos in the latest model BMWs and Cadillacs. (sure would be easy to stop each vehicle heading south, get an scan for rental car's trackers before allowing them out of the country, if Border Patrol gave a damn) thank you Don!
Each year, about 2,000 vehicles stolen from California end up in Mexico, according to the California Highway Patrol. LAPD Sgt. Juvey Mejia, a member of the Task Force for Regional Auto Theft Prevention, said the cartels love heavy-duty pickup trucks and Jeeps.
“Anything that can drive through tough terrain to get away from Border Patrol so they can move dope,” Mejia said.
Along with Chevy Suburbans, Ford Raptors and Toyota pickups, the vehicles of choice include Cadillac Escalades and BMW SUVs, according to people whose job is to recover them. To battle rival cartels or authorities, criminal groups sometimes convert the trucks into mutant tanks, adding heavy ballistic-proof steel plating, firing ports and gun mounts.
The thefts don’t require much stealth: vehicles are rented in the U.S. by cartel operatives and then driven across the border.
Unlike other states, California requires that rental agencies wait to turn on GPS tracking until the vehicle return deadline has passed and the renter has been contacted by the company. By then, most stolen vehicles are deep in Mexican territory.
“California allows criminals to take advantage of the fact that we are not allowed to see where the vehicle is until it’s too late,” Laguana said. The American Car Rental Assn., a trade group, said in a statement that California laws make it harder to recover vehicles.
this year, thieves stole six 2026 model Jeep Wranglers from Oakland and Las Vegas. Four have been recovered so far. Private investigators believe the vehicles were destined for the Sinaloa Cartel.
The same investigators received requests last week to recover a dozen Ram trucks tracked to Sinaloa and seven more in Durango state.
“For the cartel, it is the cheapest way for them to do business,” said Kevin Carter, owner of Collateral Consultants, a rental car recovery company in Texas. “There’s no sense in them buying a car when they could rent one for a few hundred bucks, and it’s theirs forever.”
Along with California, Texas and Arizona are the other top targets for Mexican criminal groups.
Many vehicles are never registered in the U.S. stolen car database. Carter, from Collateral Consultants, said that of the approximately 1 million cases he has seen in his 15 years recovering rental vehicles in the U.S. and elsewhere, fewer than half made it into the U.S. database.
In 2024, the Colorado attorney general’s office indicted 17 people associated with the Sinaloa Cartel, accusing them of stealing 190 new Ford F150s and luxury suburbans near the Denver airport. The cartel operatives drove the stolen vehicles, valued at nearly $10 million, to Mexico, according to court documents, and exchanged them for cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine.
In the Texas border city of Laredo, Deputy Police Chief Timothy Tubbs said he has seen a 50% increase in the theft of rental vehicles — about 10 a month.
“Anything that can drive through tough terrain to get away from Border Patrol so they can move dope,” Mejia said.
Along with Chevy Suburbans, Ford Raptors and Toyota pickups, the vehicles of choice include Cadillac Escalades and BMW SUVs, according to people whose job is to recover them. To battle rival cartels or authorities, criminal groups sometimes convert the trucks into mutant tanks, adding heavy ballistic-proof steel plating, firing ports and gun mounts.
The thefts don’t require much stealth: vehicles are rented in the U.S. by cartel operatives and then driven across the border.
“California allows criminals to take advantage of the fact that we are not allowed to see where the vehicle is until it’s too late,” Laguana said. The American Car Rental Assn., a trade group, said in a statement that California laws make it harder to recover vehicles.
this year, thieves stole six 2026 model Jeep Wranglers from Oakland and Las Vegas. Four have been recovered so far. Private investigators believe the vehicles were destined for the Sinaloa Cartel.
The same investigators received requests last week to recover a dozen Ram trucks tracked to Sinaloa and seven more in Durango state.
“For the cartel, it is the cheapest way for them to do business,” said Kevin Carter, owner of Collateral Consultants, a rental car recovery company in Texas. “There’s no sense in them buying a car when they could rent one for a few hundred bucks, and it’s theirs forever.”
Along with California, Texas and Arizona are the other top targets for Mexican criminal groups.
Many vehicles are never registered in the U.S. stolen car database. Carter, from Collateral Consultants, said that of the approximately 1 million cases he has seen in his 15 years recovering rental vehicles in the U.S. and elsewhere, fewer than half made it into the U.S. database.
In 2024, the Colorado attorney general’s office indicted 17 people associated with the Sinaloa Cartel, accusing them of stealing 190 new Ford F150s and luxury suburbans near the Denver airport. The cartel operatives drove the stolen vehicles, valued at nearly $10 million, to Mexico, according to court documents, and exchanged them for cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine.
In the Texas border city of Laredo, Deputy Police Chief Timothy Tubbs said he has seen a 50% increase in the theft of rental vehicles — about 10 a month.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
this looks a lot like a tire track
Spotted this in front of me in traffic last week... very odd looking mark through the dust on the back window
Mutts comic strip by Patrick McDonnell (one of my favorites I've collected the annual collections of, for about 20 years)(was a student of Will Eisner) has just released the first of several Sunday annual collections, here are a couple of the car strips
You might know of Will Eisner, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/04/will-eisner-originator-of-graphic-novel.html
"Tamara in a Green Bugatti" is a self-portrait by the Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka (nicknamed Baroness with a paintbrush) , which she made in Paris in 1929.
Commissioned in 1928 by the popular German fashion magazine Die Dame for the magazine cover, to celebrate the independence of women.
The female editor of Die Dame, encountered De Lempicka in Monte Carlo while the almost-divorced baroness was on vacation and commissioned her to paint a self-portrait for an upcoming cover.
It is one of the best-known examples of Art Deco portrait painting.
She portrayed herself as a personification of cold beauty, independence, wealth and inaccessibility.
In fact she did not own a Bugatti automobile; her own car was a small yellow Renault, which was stolen one night when she and her friends were celebrating at Café de la Rotonde in Montparnasse.
Although De Lempicka's portrait shows the steering wheel on the left side of the car, the Bugatti models 23, 43 and 46 of that period actually had the steering wheel on the right side.
Although De Lempicka's portrait shows the steering wheel on the left side of the car, the Bugatti models 23, 43 and 46 of that period actually had the steering wheel on the right side.
She flitted between the Ritz Hotel in Paris and the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo, socializing with — and capturing on canvas — her era’s elite.
She counted Queen Elizabeth of Greece, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, and the Italian poet-prince Gabriele d’Annunzio among her sitters. As Jean Cocteau put it, Lempicka ‘loved art and high society in equal measure’.
She is renowned for an Art Deco style which oozed cool chic and elegant sensuality. Portraiture was her genre, featuring stylized subjects bedecked in seductive textures and bathed in flattering light. For some works, Lempicka used herself as model, which made sense given she wore clothes by Coco Chanel and was occasionally mistaken in public for Greta Garbo.
She counted Queen Elizabeth of Greece, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, and the Italian poet-prince Gabriele d’Annunzio among her sitters. As Jean Cocteau put it, Lempicka ‘loved art and high society in equal measure’.
She is renowned for an Art Deco style which oozed cool chic and elegant sensuality. Portraiture was her genre, featuring stylized subjects bedecked in seductive textures and bathed in flattering light. For some works, Lempicka used herself as model, which made sense given she wore clothes by Coco Chanel and was occasionally mistaken in public for Greta Garbo.
In the mid 1930s Lempicka married Raoul Kuffner, a wealthy Hungarian baron. Both he and Tamara had Jewish ancestry, and sensing the way the political wind was blowing in Europe, they decided to leave for the United States in 1939.
Removed from the Paris avant-garde, Lempicka never recaptured the highs of earlier in her career. Without dukes or counts to paint, she struggled for suitable subject matter and ended up moving into abstraction.
She spent the last few years of her life in Mexico, dying in 1980. Her final artistic gesture was asking her daughter Kizette to hire a helicopter, head up to Mount Popocateptl and scatter her ashes in its volcanic crater.
After her death, there came another wave of enthusiasm for her work. Barbara Streisand and Madonna were collectors. The latter was such a fan that she included a host of Lempicka pictures at the start of the video for her song Vogue.
Removed from the Paris avant-garde, Lempicka never recaptured the highs of earlier in her career. Without dukes or counts to paint, she struggled for suitable subject matter and ended up moving into abstraction.
She spent the last few years of her life in Mexico, dying in 1980. Her final artistic gesture was asking her daughter Kizette to hire a helicopter, head up to Mount Popocateptl and scatter her ashes in its volcanic crater.
After her death, there came another wave of enthusiasm for her work. Barbara Streisand and Madonna were collectors. The latter was such a fan that she included a host of Lempicka pictures at the start of the video for her song Vogue.
Petrolicious found this and used it to get my attention... I must compliment them (well, I do, often) for an EFFECTIVE method of getting attention by using a Tony Kelly image, he is quite the imaginative and enjoyable photographer
Proof it's not all Ferrari! Nice to see a Fairlane/Torino in the collection!
By the way, a good time to bring up the difference between photography and porn, a bare butt ain't porn. No pink parts, then it ain't porn.
I can't imagine how he can afford the set ups for the scenes, the amount of rental cost, for helicopters, sports cars, mobs of beautiful models, it's quite amazing
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