Rep. Josh Gottheimer has put his car-theft bill back on the table. On October 22, 2026, the New Jersey Democrat reintroduced the bipartisan Combatting Auto Robbery at the Source Act, co-led by Staten Island Republican Nicole Malliotakis, according to his office’s announcement. Yes, it spells CARS. Congress cannot resist an acronym. house
The pitch: a national clearinghouse, so a Honda Accord stolen in Paramus doesn’t drop off the radar at the state line.
What the bill actually does
The previous version, H.R. 8585, is short. Filed May 31, 2024 with then-Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, it orders the Attorney General to create a National Auto Theft Bureau inside the Justice Department that would serve as a national repository for theft data, broker real-time sharing agreements among federal, state, and local police, train and advise industry, the public, and law enforcement, and run a pilot program for state and local agencies. congress
The new announcement adds that the training mandate would cover specific vehicle designs that make cars more vulnerable to theft, plus online theft trends. No dollar figure appears anywhere in the release. house
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The design clause is the part to watch. It hands a federal office a standing role in telling automakers their products are too easy to steal. Anyone who lived through the Hyundai and Kia theft wave knows why that matters: per the NICB’s 2025 data, those two brands accounted for 21% of all U.S. thefts in 2023, falling to 14% in 2025. Still, a bureau that issues recommendations isn’t a regulator. Without NHTSA rulemaking behind it, a “your car is a soft target” memo carries about as much legal force as a strongly worded Yelp review. wowktv
“Re-establish” is a stretch
The bill’s branding says it would revive the National Auto Theft Bureau. Here’s the catch: the original was never a government agency. The NICB traces its own lineage to the Automobile Protective and Information Bureau of 1912, which became the National Automobile Theft Bureau in 1927 and consolidated into the National Insurance Crime Bureau in 1992, as the organization told the Senate Judiciary Committee. Today the NICB is backed by more than 1,200 insurers, self-insureds, rental car firms, lenders, and auto auctions. senate nicb
So the CARS Act would build a federal office named after an insurance-industry bureau whose successor is still running a theft database. Congress also already has a federal data tool in this space: it created the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System in 1992, per NICB testimony. If this bill moves, the first hard question for its sponsors will be how a new bureau avoids becoming a third, partially overlapping data silo. senate
Check the math
The release states more than 1300 cars were stolen in New Jersey in 2025. The State Police count is ten times larger. The governor’s office reported that statewide thefts fell 9%, from 15,041 in 2024 to 13,693 in 2025, citing the NJSP Regional Operations Intelligence Center, in its year-end announcement. Probably a dropped digit, but it’s an awkward one in a bill about better data. house insidernj
The national picture also cuts against urgency. NICB counted 659,880 thefts in 2025, a 23.2% drop from 850,708 in 2024. The group calls that the lowest level in several decades. nicb
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Gottheimer’s counterargument is that the remaining thefts are the professional kind. He says the problem is “often run by organized rings that move stolen cars across state lines and out through our ports.” Malliotakis made the same point, noting that plate scanners she funded help find stolen cars in the city, but tracking gets harder once vehicles leave, and many end up on ships at New Jersey ports. That’s a fair argument: joyriders respond to better immobilizers; export rings with cargo containers don’t. house
Odds and competition
Timing isn’t kind. The bill landed less than two weeks before the November 3 midterms, and anything not passed when the 119th Congress expires next January dies. The 2024 version was referred to the House Judiciary Committee and never became law, hence this reintroduction. It also shares the theft lane with the Auto Theft Prevention Act, filed January 20, 2025, which would fund state and local agencies fighting auto theft and stolen-vehicle trafficking. congress
What owners should take from this
Nothing changes in your driveway or on your policy anytime soon. If a bureau ever does materialize, the most tangible effects would come indirectly: better recovery rates for stolen vehicles, and possibly design pressure on automakers whose cars become easy marks. Recovery speed matters to owners, since a car found quickly is far less likely to come back stripped.
In the meantime, the cheapest fix is still the boring one. New Jersey State Police have said the vast majority of thefts involve a key fob left inside or a vehicle left running, per the Attorney General’s office. No federal bureau can fix a fob in the cupholder. njoag
Be honest: where does your fob sleep at night?