This holiday season has seen an explosion in thefts of expensive, platinum-laced catalytic converters from parked cars, and authorities report that high-clearance sport utility vehicles are the targets of choice for thieves.

With a common socket wrench and 90 seconds, they leave drivers stuck with cars that sound like Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and facing repair bills topping $1,000.

“It’s an epidemic. It’s everywhere,” said Lt. Bob Turnbull of the El Segundo Police Department.

Thefts of catalytic converters have been logged in the last month in Los Angeles, Pasadena, the Bay Area and Sacramento. Arrests have been reported from Seattle to Virginia, near Pittsburgh, in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., and in Tennessee, where the Highway Patrol busted a thief cutting converters from cars impounded in one of its own lots.

“We’ve had them all over the place; we’ve had them in broad daylight in a Vons parking lot,” said Det. Jason Knickerbocker of the Manhattan Beach Police Department. “Most of them are at night. A lot of times, we never find the victim.”

The prize is a catalytic converter, a device used to reduce emissions. Platinum is more valuable than gold, and the contents of a typical converter are worth $40 to $50 to scrap-metal dealers.

Some thieves use saws, but the preferred weapon in Southern California is a ratchet with a 14-millimeter socket. The thief crawls under the car and unfastens the bolts holding the converter, a process that accomplished crooks can complete in 90 seconds.

Catalytic
converters contain expensive precious metals like platinum - which is
worth up to $1,200 an ounce; palladium, which can fetch $320 an ounce
and rhodium, the biggest prize of all. It goes for up to $6,000 an
ounce on the market.