Alarm or no alarm
 

Quick question,
have found a car alarm - viper 480, price i think is pretty good - 350€, but installation is 250€.
would like to get it, but friend brought an interesting point.
his statement was why to get an alarm when the scoody has already some kind of security system, not sure what it is in english, but only works with the key, some kind of liquid(????)
save that money and get some other tweaks.
what are the opinions on here, of course, 600€ to secure a 45000€ car seems like peanuts

In the UK an approved alarm is a must, the Subaru Impreza is a High performance car the gets stolen on a regular basis, an insurer will not touch an Impreza without a recognised and approved alarm system on the car. Thieves have taken to breaking into Homes and stealing the keys in some cases because of the high levels of security on these cars. Sad fact the cars crime is one of the things that the UK has far to much off............not sure where you are but hope it is not the same.

Yes some Subarus (not all) do have an immobilser devices built into the key....even if you have the key copied, the copy will not start the car.

The problem is it can be bypassed with an ECU swap (although one does ask, if they want the car that bad to do that, they are going to take it no matter what).

Other plus point of aftermarket alarms is they also immobilse the engine and give you remote door locking (that is if you don't have it already).

Better alarms can have anti-hijack (Clifford - fiddly to operate, but effective). And also have paging devices so it tells you it is going off either by a key fob, or a text message on your mobile phone.

IMO the alarm itself is a bit useless where I live...the siren is largly ignored, due to so many going off by accident, the public ignore them. But the built in immobilser is what makes it worthwhile.

thanks for the replies, comments - situated here in finland, where by the insurance company don't require an alarm to be fitted, even more bizarre to drivers of the uk. - the car is insured to a person, but anyone is able to drive it. this is standard practice. so you can loan the car to a friend, neighbour etc. and they are covered. And there aren't too many scoobies round here.
the immobiliser is what i meant, and i have remote locking. the alarm in question does send a mesage to the pager, and also shows where on the car is 'being attacked'

Alarms don't seem to go off too much here, wife was worried that if we get this 'state of the art' car alarm, and it does go off, that she will not know how to turn it off etc etc.

thanks again