Advanced Auto Locks 101

While it might initially seem surprising, right now it is extremely difficult to open certain cars. Robert Campbell, a locksmith who owns Advantage Locksmith in New York City, says high-end foreign cars have advanced relocking devices. For example, he says that on certain BMWs, once you get car open with tools, the relocker will go off almost immediately and the car will lock again. So instead, you either have to reach in really quickly or have an assistant with you whom you instruct that once the lock is popped, you have reach here and open it immediately.

Campbell says he can’t say his name, but he opened a Mercedes limousine for a huge hip-hop star. After his company successfully opened the car, the company that leased car said they had called a couple of locksmiths and none of them were willing to even touch this type of car because they knew how advanced it was and knew they could not do it. It happened to be that his locksmith knew the trick and used the right tools. So at 2 a.m., he got that Mercedes limo open for that rap star.

The Untouchables

Certain Mercedes and BMWs Campbell doesn’t touch. There are cars where the battery dies and the lock has deadlocking feature. In those circumstances, the customer is better off going to BMW dealer with his VIN number and trying to get key made or getting a boost and getting the battery functional again.

Today, he says he can open almost any car. He stays away from a couple of cars but there are still methods to gain access to them, whether by opening the trunk lock, or by trying to open the passenger door or rear door instead of driver door. The difficulty on doors varies depending on how you are trying to open it. One thing that he does not do do is drill open locks in order to open cars. He says if you were to drill out the door lock of a BMW or Mercedes, the client will spend at least $1,000 at the dealer to get that advanced lock replaced. Under those circumstances, it is actually much better for a client to break a window and spend a couple of hundred dollars to get the window replaced than to spend over $1,000 to replace a high-end lock. It gets harder as the years go on, but we are still able to open about 98% of the cars on the road.